Finally!

I will be writing at my newly finished website from now on. Please visit me JoshGoguen.com. Thanks!

iNotSick

Steve Jobs has hormone imbalance, will remain CEO

So, all that concern about the rapid weight loss and health of Apple CEO Steve Jobs was a little bit misdirected.  You see, Steve Jobs isn't necessarily sick sick, he just has a hormone imbalance that's causing him to drop weight.  Hormone Imbalance?  This is perfect fodder for Microsoft.  Too much Apple can turn you into a menopausal woman.

"Geez Gary, what're you on your period?"

"No, I just got an iPod Shuffle."

As an Apple product user, I'm a little bit concerned.  

Green sucks.

Enough with GREEN! If you want to be environmentally friendly that's fine. Just stop calling it "Green". I used to think it was a nice color but then the environmentalists took it. I might have been okay if they claimed forest green or teal green, but no, they took green itself.

Why does some marketing firm get to decide what we call these things? Shouldn't we be allowed to vote? I'd have gone with Earthy or Gore Friendly.

Yes, the Earth is green, but it's also blue. Could you be the Blue Movement?

So now everything is green green green green green. Man, that word starts to sound stupid after a while.

2009

Happy New Year douche bags!

2008 didn't turn out to be the gang buster year I thought it would, but if Nostradamus were off by a few years it'd still count as a hit, so I'm still holding out hope.

2009 was kicked off with a guy in a wheelchair. Not quite the rockin eve I was hoping for. You got Dick Clark who's permanently drunk and I'm rockin with a guy who snapped his neck a few years ago. Doesn't really instill me with hope. Positive attitude though.

My resolutions?

Stretch. My hamstrings are tight.
Be more aggressive. I go with the flow way too much and need to change that.
Update my website. Speaks for itself, but I need to get my shit together.

Maybe '09 will be the '08 I wanted.

Best wishes to all.

Number 1 Resolution Part 3: Exercise

If diet is 80%, why would you bother with exercise? Diet is 80% of how you look but how your body moves is another story. The old cliche "move it or lose it" applies to you. Ever see a man who was fairly active retire and rapidly turn into an immobile old man? That's what a sedentary lifestyle will eventually do to you.

My philosophy on exercise is a combination of CrossFit's and a few other sources. Your exercise should be hard and intense. Like with diet, I look to what nature has given us. If you're a hunter, you would conserve energy until you needed in, in which case you would expend large amounts of effort and then get plenty of rest. Picture a wild lion. They lay around most of the day, but when they hunt down prey they are fast and vicious. They don't spend time in the fat burning zone or check their heart beats.

I know, jogging is a great way to lose weight. I've done it myself and was fairly happy with the results. Then I noticed the difference in the bodies of distance joggers verses the bodies of sprinters. The sprinters were leaner, more muscular and looked healthier overall. Also, jogging bores me.

When you lift, lift heavy. Force your body to become stronger. If you're doing 12 reps of some exercise and running your mouth about some TV show you saw last night, you're wasting your time. Heavy for you is different than it is for the next person. Don't worry if some guy can bench 400 pounds and you struggle with 95. Just worry about improving yourself.

If you can't get to a gym, don't worry. I'm not a big fan of commercial gyms anyway. The majority of the machines are useless. 95% of the people there just like the social aspect. Most of the trainers don't know how to perform the exercises right. You don't need it. There are great body weight exercises you can do. Running is free.

If you want something, don't spend a ton of money on some huge piece of equipment that you have to sacrifice a room for. I'm sure the Bowflex is great, but you don't need it. The Gazel sucks. The ROM is an expensive hunk of garbage. Get your hands on a kettlebell.

What is a kettlebel?

Think of it as a cannonball with a handle. The kettlebell has been around for a long time and has long been used in Russia and kettlebell lifting is even a national sport there. It is a great home gym in that you can use it to build strength, improve cardio, even work on coordination; there's a reason they are popular with MMA fighters. When you're done, just put in in the closet.

With all of that said, here are a few sites I recommend you visit:

1. CrossFit - Again, where it all started over for me. CrossFit is about being proficient in as much as possible. The work outs are comprised of power lifting movements, olympic lifting movements, gymnastic skills, and much much more. The focus is on intensity. How quickly can you do 150 burpees? How many pull-ups, push-ups, and squats can you do in 20 minutes? What is your 1 rep max in the overhead press? CrossFit covers it all. The focus is on performance. Don't think you can hang? Every workout is scalable to your fitness level and what kind of equipment you have. Remember how good the guys in 300 looked? This is where many of their training ideas came from.

2. Performance Menu - PM is similar to CrossFit with the focus being mainly on strength. You still get a good conditioning workout, but typically the metabolic workouts are short in order to keep your cardio in good shape while still focusing your attention on being as strong as possible.

3. Dragon Door - THE place to go for all of your kettlebell needs. Pavel Tsatsouline is a Russian strength and conditioning expert who lives exercise and his specialty is the kettlebell. I highly recommend any and all of his books. Naked Warrior is about body weight only exercises. Enter the Kettlebell is a great introduction to the Kettlebell. Power to the People is your guide to gaining strength with 2 sets of deadlifts and presses a day. The man knows what he's talking about.

Dragon Door kettlebells are also the best I've used. They are a bit more expensive than others, but they have the best handles and are very well balanced. You can also find a good deal on eBay that can save you up to $100 at times. If your a guy a 16 Kg or 20 Kg bell and the Enter the Kettlebell DVD with is a great introduction. If your a woman, 8 Kg or 12 Kg bell with the The Kettlebell Goddess Workout> DVD is a good start.

I'm only listed 3 websites because they are the main 3 I go to. All three cover weight loss, cardio fitness and strength training. Just about anything you want to know can be found here. The forums are excellent sources of information and they are very welcoming to new people.

As always, talk to your doctor, blah blah blah. Work hard and work smart. You'll be glad you did when you're 60 and can still move well.

Number 1 Resolution Part 2: Eating

If you want to see results towards your New Years resolution of losing weight, diet is going to be 80% of the formula. Exercise all you want, if your eating isn't right, you won't see the difference. Sure, you'll feel stronger or have more endurance, you'll even see a change in body composition, but it won't be nearly as dramatic as when your diet is dialed in.

For me, I've been eating mostly a Paleo diet. Meals consist of mainly meats, fruits, vegetables, and nuts. I stay away from breads, pastas, rice, and potatoes. At first, the rice and potatoes made no sense to give up on, but at some point, I decided to make a leap of faith with the recommendations of people I trusted and the weight just dropped off. The idea behind the diet is to eat what a hunter-gatherer would because that's basically what your body was made to be.

Also, diet isn't a temporary thing. You have to be willing to make a lifestyle shift. That's why most people fail. They aren't willing to make a long term change. It's tough to blame them because most diets seem so rigid and any deviation is to be frowned upon.

The people who I tend to listen to give guidelines and not rules. They say to eat a certain way, but also to feel free to make adjustments for your needs. If you want dairy, have it. Just don't expect the same results as if you didn't take eat it (If you're looking to gain weight, milk can be your friend). If you want more carbs, at least try natural sources like sweet potatoes; some have had decent results with oats or rice.

My indulgence is "Free Day". That's the one day a week where I allow myself pizza, cookies, and any other food that I've been craving that week. Usually, after the first meal I'm ready to puke.

Here are some websites that I recommend. I don't agree with everything these guys say, but they have definitely had an impact on the way I view food and it's relation to health.

1. Arthur DeVany - Arthur DeVany is a 72 year old statistician who has also been studying health in relation to how our bodies were made. His brand of fitness is called Evolutionary Fitness and he's been perhaps the most influential person on me to this point. He advises diet and activity patterns that mimic those found in nature (very similar to the Paleo diet). I also greatly respect that he lives what he preaches. The man is 72 and is in amazingly good shape and is still very athletic with out hormone replacements or other drugs.

2. CrossFit Forums - Where it all started for me. These guys are all about what works. They have 2 diets that they support. The Zone Diet and the Paleo Diet. There is a lot of discussion about both and if you have any questions, it's likely been asked and answered there.

3. Performance Menu Forums - The second step from CrossFit. They share a lot of the same ideas with PM being more about strength than CrossFit. Also, I think these guys are a little more tightly knit of a group.

4. The IF Life - Mike O'Donnell is a health and fitness coach who I came to be aware of thru the Performance Menu. The reason I recommend him is because he is one of the guys who introduced me to the idea of Intermittent Fasting. To put it simply, IF is getting out of the mindset that you have to eat every few hours. If we were in the wild, you wouldn't know where your next meal would come from. It makes no sense for your body to be destroyed by this process and may even be healthful. For me, IF is just delaying when I have my first meal. For others, they eat a day, skip a day. We get our daily calories in, just in a smaller window.

5. Underground Wellness - This is a link to the YouTube videos of Sean Croxton, Certified Personal Trainer and a very well researched Diet and Lifestyle Coach. I don't know if I buy the Metabolic Typic program that he's into, but he is I do respect his opinions. Also, if you're like me, being able to watch videos in small chunks is a great way to pick stuff up. He's fairly new to me, but I feel confident in recommending him.

These are sites that have helped me. If you don't agree with them, that's fine. There are tons of ideas out there because they've all seemed to have worked for someone. Just be active in finding what works for you. If you go buy some diet book, and it doesn't work, it doesn't mean healthy eating won't help you, it just means that book wasn't for you. Most of all, find something that makes sense to you.

Number 1 resolution Part 1

In honor of the number one New Year's resolution, lose weight, I'm going to use my next few blogs to address some things I've learned about it over the last few years. Today, I'll give you a little background.

I was a fat kid growing up. While not the biggest kid in school, I was picked for the school's tug-o-war team for the weight advantage.

For my 11th birthday, I was given a gym membership. My dad and uncle were really into weight lifting, and I think Dad might have been a bit concerned about my weight and perhaps thought that if I would focus on some weights, I'd put on some muscle instead of fat. I did put on some muscle, but I ate tons of garbage so it was well hidden under gut and tits.

My first year of high school I was pretty much sick of myself and decided to lose weight. I followed the low fat plan and did a half hour to an hour of aerobic activity every day after school. I got down to a respectable weight but it didn't last very long. Slowly my eating got worse, I got lazy, I got heavier.

Over the next several years I would go from 185 to 200 to 190 to 210. The heaviest point I hit was 220. I'm 5'7" tall, and that's way out of the range I needed to be in. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I carried the weight fairly well because I was still lifting weights so I could kid myself into thinking that I was mostly muscle. I could be one of those guys in the gyms who said, "Ah, I'm focusing more on strength right now."

A few years ago, I got into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. To test myself, I wanted to compete in some tournaments. BJJ is a weight class sport and competing at Heavyweight was not a good idea. I wasn't big enough to compete with guys who were legitimately my size, much less people who were bigger. I started the process of losing weight again.

Jogging 3 miles a few days a week and eating my low fat diet in 6 small meals a day, my weight went to 185. Actually, I was about 192, but cutting water weight got 185 to appear on the scales at the weigh in. I was happy because I didn't think there was much more to lose that.

Thru Jiu Jitsu, I was introduced to a training philosophy called CrossFit. For someone who'd been in and out of typical gyms for 16 years at that point, it seemed weird. After hearing that a lot of professional fighters do it, why not give it a try? The more I got into it, the more reading I did and the more my ideas of health and fitness changed.

Now with a different diet and workout regimen, I'm 173.

This isn't an attempt to brag, but a chance to let you know that I've been there. There's nothing worse than someone who's always been thin giving advice on how to do it.

Oh, really, all you do is not take the elevator and walk up the 3 flights of stairs to you apartment instead?
So, you just don't eat the pizza crusts and you stay thin?

There's a lot that I've learned that still I still haven't seen in more mainstream sources. In the next few days, the suggestions I give will mostly be websites to read that have helped me tremendously.

No more compliments.

It's amazing how quickly a compliment can slowly turn. Give it a try when you see a friend who's lost a little weight.

"Wow, did you lose weight? You look good."

"Thanks. Yes I did."

"That's crazy. I just...wow."

"Thanks."

"I'm just so surprised. I mean you're REALLY looking good."

"Um...thanks."

"I mean, not that you didn't look okay before, but now, just, wow!"

"Don't ever talk to me again."

That person will never again ask "Hey, do ya notice anything new?"