HOW TO LOSE 90 POUNDS IN 6 MONTHS (or, How I Did It)

1. ACKNOWLEDGE- that you are going to fail, and that WHEN you do, you just start over....it's OK, everyone messes up their plan.
2. EXERCISE- cardio, lots of it, 30-40 minutes a day, 5 days a week (6 if you're just that crazy).
3. REST- 6-8 hours a night (you won't lose weight consistently without it).
4. HYDRATE- at least 64 oz. a day of WATER, though some will say drink half your body weight in ounces.
5. SUPPLEMENTS- All I really take is a good whole food multi-vitamin...anything else is mostly hype.
6. ACCOUNTABILITY- find someone who is doing this with you, helpful if they've already done it and can prepare you for what's coming (Gracias, Senor McIntyre).
7. DIET- Ready for it? Each meal should have a fist-size portion of lean protein, a fist-size portion of fruits or vegetables, and half a fist of fat (avocado, walnuts, almonds).

NO refined sugar (though I do use honey, less impact to blood sugar and it's natural)
NO high-fructose corn syrup
NO artificial sweeteners
NO soda, diet or otherwise
NO juice, eat a fruit if you want juice
NO margarine or cooking oils- Cook in real butter or coconut oil.
NO table salt- Sea Salt only.
NO- simple carbs (potatoes, breads, pasta, etc). They're all out, at least for the first 8 weeks or so. You can add back in a bit of brown rice, whole grain bread with no preservatives or corn syrup after that.

I'm sure I'll think of more, but that's the basics of the diet. I take one meal a week off and eat what I want, and generally feel like death the following day, FYI. Drink green tea, lots of water, and DO NOT forget the fats. It seems weird, but if you don't eat some fat, nuts, avocado, something, you will NOT lose weight.

There are lots of good resources out there for diet and exercise- I've had some success with most of them. The big thing about this is that you have to make it work with your life AS IT IS NOW. Don't reinvent the wheel. Fill the house with the kinds of foods you CAN eat, and get rid of all the rest. Go OUT for your cheat meal, so you don't eat a block of cheese or a package of Oreo's at 3 AM after a bad day that just won't quit! (It's like I've been there). Always reference #1 above also- you WILL fail, so acknowledge that and be prepared to start over every time you do. THat will make the difference between just another New Year's resolution failed and a conscious decision you developed an unstoppable plan for, and then EXECUTED IT.

TRADITION MEETS MMA

So I was pretty excited about this when I read it- I posted a story from MMAFighting.com, about a crossover from Chuck Norris' World Combat League (WCL). WCL is ole' Chuck's answer to MMA, where teams of fighters from various cities duke it out for points, going towards a team win. From what I've seen, WCL elevates the class of MMA a bit, with more focus on proper striking techniques, and a bit less "ground and pound" (which, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy a bit of). This is a league more for the master of traditional martial arts, though that is not to say it is sub-par in any way.

The unfortunate side-effect of being founded by Chuck Norris though, is that though everybody loves Chuck, anything he puts his name to is just never taken quite as seriously as it's "non-Chuck" alternative....I blame it on "Walker, Texas Ranger" (you know you've seen it).

At any rate, it's cool to see this guy, Raymond Daniels, crossing over into the MMA world, and I sincerely hope he does well. I think it would speak well of WCL, and of traditional martial arts in general. The guy is a 5th degree black belt in TKD (props to him), as well as Karate, and I am stoked for him. If you read interviews with him, you'll probably note what I did, that he could use a little less attitude. I am of the opinion that actions speak louder than words, and usually, when some guy is saying he wants to be the best, it's generally the guy quietly training behond him who ends up whooping his ARSE in the end. Oh well, here's hoping.

Posted on MMAFighting.com 06/23/08—12:14 PM
Featured Story:
Chuck Norris' World Combat League champion Raymond "The Real Deal" Daniels will make his mixed martial arts debut at this Friday's Strikeforce event in San Jose.
Daniels has drawn comparisons to Strikeforce middleweight champion Cung Le for his unblemished kickboxing record. But instead of San Shou, Daniels' background is in Karate.
"I still haven't had any challenges or anything like that so I decided to come over to MMA and see how good I really am," Daniels said of the move.
Daniels compiled a record of 18-0 in three seasons with the WCL. As captain, he led his Los Angeles Stars squad this season to a championship. Daniels capped off the season by knocking out his opponent with a spinning back kick.
Daniels will fight Jeremiah Metcalf (8-4), who will enter the middleweight contest with a three-fight winning streak.
A lightweight title bout between champion Gilbert Melendez and challenger Josh Thomson will headline the Strikeforce event from the HP Pavilion.

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I AM SO LOST

Not sure what I'm gonna do this week- the do jhang is closed for world competition in Little Rock, and I am moving this weekend, so I'm sure my training schedule will be the first to go to crap! The good news is, with all the moving, I should be losing a few extra lbs. this week, which will make returning to the program next week a little easier. I want to be 299 by the end of next week. 10 lbs. to go.

My martial arts inspiration for the week comes from the movie "The Last Samurai". I make it a habit never to recommend or endorse Tom Cruise films, but I will make an exception for this one. I know it's got Hollywood all over it, and I'm sure the historicity could be called into question, but for sheer action-movie goodness, this one is gold. Check out the aikido sequence in the village, the first katana "lesson" in the rain, and my personal favorite, the main battle sequence, specifically when Ujio's (pictured above getting ready to whoop on Tommy-boy) horse is speared and he falls, and in one movement he rolls, is up on his feet, has both swords out, and dispatches about 7 or 8 guys in a row with such fluidity and grace (if killing can be graceful....oxymoron?). That scene in particular was inspring for me as I work on forms and techniques- you see that character throughout the movie practicing and always using proper form, even using a paper fan to move through a kata. I know it's just a movie, but that kind of discipline is what makes it LOOK like you know what you're doing....because you KNOW what you're doing.

TRYING SOMETHING NEW

For the next two months, I'll be "running" 6 days a week to prepare for the half-marathon I plan to run on August 31. I say "running", emphasis on the "", because I'm trying something new- I'll be doing 4 out of 6 runs, including my long training run on Saturdays, on an elliptical machine. Weird, I know, and the running purists will scoff, but hear me out.

This advice came from my uncle, who has run more races than I can remember, and he told me he does almost all of his running on an elliptical. Me being at about 312 lbs right now, I thought it might be good to take on this training plan, so as to preserve what's left of my joints after my first half-marathon, which I ran a while back at 325 lbs.

For the curious, it basically looks like this-
MONDAY- Run (3 miles on 38 minutes or less)
TUESDAY- Elliptical (40 minutes, comfortable pace)
WEDNESDAY- Run (3 miles in 38 minutes or less)
THURSDAY- Elliptical (40 min, comfortable pace)
FRIDAY- Elliptical (3 miles in 38 minures or less)
SATURDAY- Elliptical (5.5 miles in 65 minutes or less)
SUNDAY - OFF

Every week, I try to get my time down while building my mileage up, but even on my long runs, I never spend more than 80 minutes on the elliptical, and by then I'm going 7 miles. We'll see how this works- so far I feel great, but I haven't had any long runs yet, so I don't know how it will feel once I'm pushing out 13.1. The theory is that by pushing my RPMs higher and higher, getting my time faster and faster, I will create endurance without logging in half-marathon mileage every week. My knees and feet like this idea. Updates to come.

FOCUS, DANIEL-SAN

So the few of you who visit here will notice that much has changed here on my blog. I want to re-focus and re-purpose this thing, partially because it feels pointless to ratttle on about my life with no end in mind, and also because I need the accountability of tracking my progress in front of people.

Here's the backstory:

I started out more or less the first of 2008 weighing in at 399.6 lbs. No excuses, no rationalizing, I just let myself go. I am 29 years old, and I looked at my kids (6 and 1), and honestly with the way I was feeling, was scaed about how long I was going to be here for them. A lot of things began to happen all at once. We started a weight-loss competition at work, I started taking Taekwondo (OK,I had been doing it for a while with my daughter, but I hadn't really worked at it until about January), and my wife started seeing a doctor who put us on an awesome nutrition plan tghat has helped us both to lose weight.

So, now fast-forward to today. I am now at 314 lbs, just about half-way to my goal of 225 lbs by December (I may actually try to go to 200, but 225 is 10 lbs ligher than I've ever been as an adult, so I wanted to be realistic about my body (muscle weighs more than fat, baby). I've lost 85 lbs, I am now a Red Belt (decided) in Taekwondo, I am running a half-marathon in August, and plan to test for my black belt by December. From here, I plan to talk about the process, what works and what doesn't, how I'm feeling and how I get things done, and maybe someone will stumble across this and it will help them. WHO KNOWS?!?! Having said this, we begin......