TAKE THE GUN, LEAVE THE CANNOLI

My thinking goes like this:  Three chief suspects for my illness.  1) Genes: born with the disposition to have rogue blood.  2) Environment: exposure to some nasty stuff somewhere along the way, factory jobs, agricultural chemicals, New Orleans post-Katrina, the list is not endless, but it's frighteningly long.  3) Metabolism:  I ate pretty standard American diet for 35 years.  I was obese for a fair percentage of them. 260 at one point.  People have different tolerances for hideous diet, smoking, alcohol, long phone calls and other stuff that's bad for you.  Short tolerances get expressed different ways.  Some people are the life of the party and die in a car crash.  Some people get cancer.

Of course the suspects aren't necessarily discrete actors.  Obviously.  One could be born with a yucky chromosome, drink some benzene swimming in the river and have a diet that affords little opportunity for cell repair. One is probably gonna come down with something catastrophic. Where does the fault lie?  Well, the suspects are in collusion.  And you don't have to work too hard to think up other scenarios.  My point is suspects one and two--working alone or in conjunction-- I can do very little if anything about.  Statute of limitations ran out on these guys a long time ago.  They are beyond reach.  Number three, metabolism, if it had any role to play is still largely under my control... jurisdiction, to really stretch the metaphor.

I was fat, some of you may remember.  For a long time.  I ate what everyone ate.  Meat, Pasta, Bread. Did I mention pasta?  Vegetables were like a garnish.  Fruit?  meh, what else you got.  Fast food?  loved it.  For four years, I ate McDonalds, Burger King or Wendy's AT LEAST three times a week.  I was teaching and coaching at a school in the middle of nowhere.  Really, it was the capitol of nowhere. Our cross-town rivals were an hour and twenty minutes away.  For every away game we took: equipment bags, med kit, envelope of 5 dollar bills to give to the kids when we stopped for food.  Fast Food.  Always.  At least three times a week.

One day I turned my head and felt my cheek on my shoulder.  My fat face.  Really creeped me out, and then I started noticing all the ways adipose tissue starts to show up besides in the mirror.  Jiggling.  Sweating.  Goddamn I'm fat.  260.  That was it.  I was a wrestler, I knew how to lose weight.  Well, let's say I knew how to MAKE weight.  I starved myself.  Ran a ton (little pun, there).  Sweated it all off.  Not all.  40 pounds.  Got down to 220.  People said I looked good; what they meant was better.  I felt better.  I thought:  It's not the food, it's the fast food.  This was before Fast Food Nation, before Morgan Spulock.  I swore it off.  never again.  That was 1997.  I have had exactly three fast food feedings in 16 years.  Two egg McMuffins on early morning drives.  One filet-o-fish and fries:  I was with a VERY FAMOUS poet (how's that for an oxymoron?) we'd been bird hunting.  What a time, awesome guy, freakin' WAY famous (for a poet) he goes: lets grab some grub.  Sure, thinking Mt. Washington, Fells' Point, beers, steaks, food.  Nope.  The golden arches.  The clown with the house for cancer patients.  He even offered to pick up the check.  Hey, awesome, put your wallet away, I'm just gonna kick you in the balls. You know, as a friendly gesture.  I did not know how to say to famous poet: Sorry awesome poet guy, great dog, good birds, beautiful over-under, thanks for the trip but I ain't eating that shit.  I said: Uh, I'll have a filet-o-fish, i guess.  (half slice of cheese is a nice touch.)  Interesting question: what's the least harmful food on the McDonald's menu?  gotta be the coffee.  without the bird lime creamer.

Shortly after fast food, I gave up soda.  Say, '99.  Weight trending in between 220 and 240.  Still way too heavy.  Still so far from healthy a mile run might have crippled me.  But I was oblivious to health.  I knew strong, or what I thought was strong.  I could bench press 300lbs. My screaming rotators would wake me up in the night, but I could move some weight if allowed to lie down first.  I didn't want to be fat. It seriously bummed me out.  I tried to lose weight.  Years and Years.  I'd starve.  Exercise.  Lose a few.  Think, maybe this time. . . and then get two entrees with rice at the Chinese take out.  Kung Pao, General Tso's.  When I was 31 I ran a marathon and trained with a National Championship wrestling team.  Terrific shape.  For me.  At the time.  Routinely ate a pound of noodles after long runs or just a hard practice.  They were all hard practices, these guys were prep champions.  The assistant coach (that's me) was a slob.  I think I actually gained weight while prepping for the marathon.  Trained right up to within a week or two of second marathon.  Finished a twenty miler and said, no mas.  Still 240.  Size 38 pants.  48 Jacket.  18 freaking inch neck.

It went on like that.  Too heavy.  Sometimes fit or less so.  Sometimes strong or less so.  In 2008 I could rep 225 in the bench 15-20 times.  But i was starting to hate exercise.  There was no upside.  Go beat your brains out, feel like a sissy on the stairmaster.  Stay fat.  Do all the work, get zero of the benefit.  In 2009 I switched to high-intensity interval training.  I liked it, it was a lot like wrestling practice.  I tried the zone diet:  Weighed and measured all my food for a month.  peeled off 20, 30 40 pounds.  200lbs. First time since jr year in High school.  wow.  200 pounds felt amazing.  Pull ups!!  In the strength to weight ratio you can increase the numerator or you can decrease the denominator.   Suddenly, although not all that sudden at all, I was not fat.  I was kinda pleased.  It wasn't the exercise--though I was doing plenty, more than ever, even more than marathon training.  It wasnt the exercise because I'd been exercising hard for 8 or 9 mos. without so much as a pound lost.  It was the zone.  Changed my diet and Blammo,  I couldn't keep weight on.  As long as I kept to 40-30-30% Carbohydrate-protein-Fat, I couldn't keep weight on.  Interesting.  I knew the percentages and obeyed them.  In my heart I knew it was the no bread part of carb portion.  The only way you can keep to those percentages and not be starving all the time is to get carbs from vegetable sources.  Eat dense, processed carbs and you're gonna be hungry and probably cheat.  Eat green fibrous, low glycemic carbs and it might not be as tasty but you wont be hungry all the time.  got down to 190 and stalled.  Seemed like "my" weight.  But without putting too fine a point on it, I wasn't exactly lean.  Still a handful to grab around the middle.  Meh.  I felt good.

But if I lost 15 more pounds how many pull ups could I do?  Next I tried intermittent fasting.  I was a wrestler, or to use the clinical term, former bulimic.  I knew how NOT to eat.  I was gonna try NOT eating for a while.  One, Two and three day fasts.  One is a party trick.  Two is challenging.  Three?  You do three and you've done something.  Something very very difficult and stupid.  Three day fast is a force coupler for natural level meanness.  Makes you so mean and rotten dumpsters are like flower beds.  Turned me into satan.  Tell you the truth though:  long fasts are instructive.  I learned what hungry really is.  You're usually not hungry.  You're thirsty, or bored, or coming down off your insulin high.  Don't trust me, give it a try.  One or two-day is probably plenty.

Of course in this time I got sick, underwent 10mos of therapy, had a two year remission, relapsed, battled back, got a hard re-set and began recovery.  Here's what I'll say about that time with respect to diet/nutrition and maybe this is the point of this shotgun blast:  at one point I was 145 pounds, looking every bit the cancer patient that I was.  ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE POUNDS. (!)  I held on to my low-carb diet for a LONG time, too long truth be told, and then finally let it go.  Was starting to believe the disease was refractory, which it turned out to be, and I started eating bread, ice cream, cereal, all the goodies.  Oh man could I do unspeakable things to a bag of Oreos.  Right before I threw in the diet towel, one doc said: you gotta eat something, you need to keep some weight.  I said:  what for?  She said:  I see your point.  Do it anyway, just in case.  So I just started eating whatever, whenever.  It felt like giving up.  It was in some small but important way.  I gave up eating the way I had come to believe was best because I didn't think anything was going to make a difference, uh, save me.  So:  I'm getting chewed up by disease, by inactivity, by fatigue, by "therapy."  Im 145 pounds, but--check this:  pants that I wear right now, today, at 190 did not fit me.  THEY WERE TOO SMALL.  I gained "weight"--that is, I got thicker, fatter in the middle and legs and caboose.  No muscle mass to speak of, that was melting away on the couch, but I was fat again.  True fact.  Metabolism.

So now I'm eating very low carb.  I sorta flirted with it before--I see now that I was flirting with it.  I'm guessing Im around 20g/day.  Mostly from fruit.  But pretty much 0g of sugar.  Added sugar.  Once or so a week I have 1/4 cup of rice.  In my head I know all about rice.  In my heart...I don't know, can 2 billion people be wrong?  I think (I hope) I tolerate it better in the absence of sugar.  Low carb, slow carb, whatever you want to call it.  I don't weigh and measure, I don't fast, except when I do.  Some mornings I eat six eggs before I have coffee, I'm so hungry.  Some days I go 'til noon with out more than just coffee.  Sometimes you get caught in a jam:  hungry, nothing to eat.  Ever been to an airport?  State sponsored exile from real food.  Before, I would have caved, plugged my nose, made the least offensive choice--Kind Bar or something of that ilk--and made do.  Now I just don't eat.  I can do that.  I know how.  Missing a meal or three isn't the end of the world.  You aren't gonna dry up and blow away.  If there is no food I find acceptable, I don't eat.  Put your foot down.  Make a stand.  What's acceptable?  Meat, eggs, vegetables, nuts, fruit, cream.  Will some corn sneak in?  In August, in Lancaster County?  You bet your ass it will.  A roll every once in a while?  Sure.  But no sugar.  I'm not naive, I know it leaks into some stuff but I am vigilant. (looking at you "natural" peanut butter, and KETCHUP for chrissake)  There's sugar in fruit, I know that.  There's also a ton of fiber and water and it's real food.  And when I say I have fruit, I mean I have maybe two pieces a day.  Yesterday I had a peach that was so good I thought I was eating god's ass.  Eat a peach is right.  Thank you Allman Brothers.  Peaches are the warp speed lever to nirvana.  And a very good trochee.

I've sorta developed this superstition about sugar.  Went to a friend's house for dinner the other night.  Took some Cannoli as a gift.  Great cannoli, made daily, filled to order, by real eye-talians  Mental.  Didn't have one.  Wanted one.  Allowed myself one.  Couldn't eat it.  Felt like bad luck. I'm also admitting my motivation is different.  The stakes feel pretty high.  Fuck that.  They are high.  You know that poker game for change, coin money?  You hang around, hope to catch a card on your gut-shot straight.  What's 50 cents?  Sure. Why not?  But a big-time game? No limit, black checks?.  You play differently, you guard your bankroll.  you try to stay alive.

I hope this is all fairly straightforward.  Hopefully instructive, edifying.  It's not the butter it's the bread.  It's the sugar.  Remember that starches break down into sugar.  Chew up a potato chip, spit it out onto a napkin.  Wait 10min.  Taste it.  Yeah I know, gross.  Could you kiss yourself?  Taste it anyway.  What do you taste?  Sweet.  Your saliva has started the conversion to sugar.

And, But, So: I was faced with the dilemma:  what to do with my kids.  For most of this story, I ate the way I ate, Heather played along with certain allowances.  (Looking at you Smartfood popcorn.)  And the kids ate kinda, sorta the way we did.  But jesus, cereal for breakfast?  Treats from friends and school and relatives and Hey, let's go get some ice cream.  Sure, who can't get behind an ice cream run? Only an ogre.  In a jam for dinner?  You make a lotta friends with pizza.  And then it sorta washed over me in the organic cereal aisle: a moment of panic.  Try to find one, "good" organic, "healthy" cereal with fewer than 5 grams of sugar.  HOLY CRAP.  You can't just try to side step sugar.  You gotta actively, vigilantly avoid sugar.  Step one is just stay away from anything with a label.  (I mean, nice of the government to insist on all that data, but...if you gotta check, the news probably ain't good.)  Their (the kids') health was WAY more important than mine.  If I was gonna hold myself to a standard, believe that some diet was better for me, then what kinda derelict would give his kids second best?  Desserts ended about 6mos ago.  Cold bird.  That was hard for oh, about three nights.   And no more sandwiches.  That took a bit longer to adapt to.  But we adapted.  It's still hard to have a hot dog (grass-fed, uncured) without a bun, grandmothers still make cookies.  That's what grandmothers do and we oughta be grateful.  But we are careful.  Patient and relentless.  Bruce Lee said be like water.  This is what I take him to mean.  Patient and relentless.  take small steps.  Dont stop taking small steps.  There is always room for improvement.

Stealing a page from the Sant playbook we recently instituted the weekly breakfast menu.  MON: smoothie day, zero added sugar.  TUES, oatmeal, touch of honey allowed.  WED: fruit and cream.  THURS: eggs and bacon or sausage  Fri: cereal 5g sugar max.  This has cut our (their) sugar consumption by gosh, gotta be 80%.  They sleep better. They wake fresher.  Not so much whining in the morning.  Am I imagining it?  Seeing the results I hoped for?  Maybe.  I don't think so.  They also eat more.  More meat and cheese and vegetables and Dad can I have an apple please? Yes you may.  Apple juice?  What are you, nuts?  I've even seen them lean out a little, maybe a product of just growing, maybe better diet.  They are wiry, lively little cusses. My life's most important work.  It's  not just my job to feed them, it's my job to make sure they know how to eat.  One final tip:  pork rinds.  Crunchy, tasty, 0 carbs.

Maybe this all comes across kinda preachy and finger-wagging.  I don't mean it to.  I'm just trying to pass along what my experience has been, with the idea it might be helpful.  You should exercise.  You should eat right.  You should decide what those mean for yourself.  The exercise program that you can't stick to is the same as the diet you can't follow--just thought experiments with very little data.  This is what's worked for me.  Answers and results will vary.  Be patient, be relentless.

I know this ain't no exercise blog anymore, but I couldn't resist.  The vid above is a 170 snatch.  Most ever.  EVER.  There's also a 205 clean and 205 jerks for a triple.  The youtube is giving me fits.  If i cant post or embed i will try to provide links.

keep it player, ya'll.

Clean
Jerks