God is in the Details: Planning Ahead 101

Well, well, well...

In about two weeks I would have completed 10 whole months of straight up Wellness Logging. I could not be happier. Most of you who follow me on social media already know about my obsession with the Wellness Log and how it organizes my entire life in terms of exercise, nutrition and supplementation as well as being the sole program I follow and the entity entirely responsible for my progress over the past year both physically and mentally.

But the Wellness Log isn't just about reading it day-by-day and following it as it comes; it's all about planning ahead. Most people see it as more of a daunting premise that they're told what to eat day in, day out for eight whole weeks. I, on the other hand, think of it another way entirely. I believe that knowing what I'll be consuming - down to the midday snacks - for eight weeks gives me an advantage over others. It allows me to plan way ahead. It allows me to set tight budgets for groceries and know that I won't be squandering money on things that'll end up taking up shelf space then going to waste. Most of all, it allows me to deal with the curve balls life throws at me, whether it's business travel, a weekend getaway to the beach or just simply staying at the office a little longer than I had planned.

Obviously I'm on the extreme side of the spectrum, I in no way try to convince others I'm "normal" or a "standard" to follow. I treat my body like the machine I believe it is. I feed it the right fuels, make sure it's moving and functioning properly and above all; ensure that it gets the rest it deserves and needs from time to time. I do however believe that my methods are universally applicable to anyone who wants to take charge and make sure their approach is fool-proof. I digress.

Where do you start? Read up.

Whether you're following the Wellness Log or any other program, you should know up ahead that nutrition is 80-90% if the game. Exercise is the easy bit. It only happens for an hour a day or less. The remaining 23 hours of the day make or break your entire progress. Planning ahead comes down to read up and understanding all the variables which you need to be aware of in order to control.

Fig. 1: Sample shot from The Wellness Log Eight-Week Schedule

When I get my new log, I spend an entire day reading the whole thing, understanding my meal schedule, its patterns, and making up a grocery list of the items I'd need every week in their specific quantities which allows me to set a specific budget.

Next up is learning how to cook in bulk.

This one comes down to gaining experience over time. You're to burn a lot of food at first. Under-cook it, overcook it or straight up fuck shit up in your kitchen. We're not all natural born Julia Childs. You gain experience in the kitchen and you get better at managing multiple tasks and eventually getting good enough to cook for the entire week and knowing how to store foods properly and knowing which foods can live out a week in your fridge and which foods can only be made on the day of.

Fig. 2: Cooking in bulk can help alleviate the mental stress associated with daily cooking

Things like oven roasted/grilled chicken or cooked vegetables generally tend to live out just fine in sealed Tupperware containers inside your fridge or freezer over the week. Things such as salads on the other hand are best made fresh on the day of to avoid wilting of greens.

The biggest weapon in my arsenal though? The briefly aforementioned Tupperware.

Fig. 3: Your new bestest of friends, family and loved ones all compactly stored together in joyous harmony

Air/Liquid tight Tupperware containers can and will become your new best friends. You will store cooked food into them. You will scurry your daily meals into them and carry them across town to college or work. You will wash them. You will cherish them. You will be committed to them. You will drive up to Vermont and hold a commitment ceremony with them. You will love them forever.

At the end I guess it all comes down to how much you want it, and if you want it bad enough, you'll find yourself willing to make sacrifices you found laughable just weeks or even days ago. You'll be cooking the next day's food the night before. You'll be the guy with the comically large backpack who walks around everywhere with his 3,000 calories-a-day in tow. You won't be fazed by the ridicule you get even from your friends because at the end of the day; you do what you do for you, to become the best you.

Are you ready to walk down that road?

Face Your Face: Realism 101

Before you even think about it, you better shut the fuck up for a second and go through this. We all, and I mean all do this. We start out our little fitness experiment, some call it a phase, and we all kick it off with a vision. In most of our visions, it’s usually us standing at the end of the road - which we presume took around a month or so - looking so good we make Adonis look like a prison bitch.

Y’all be trippin monkey balls if you’ll keep thinking like that.

You are only setting yourself up for failure, disappointment and frustration if you think, even for a second, that there are shortcuts when it comes to fitness. If you’re going to the gym for a month or two before beach season so you don’t look like an incarnation of Shamu on the exclusive A-list beach party queue, then good for you, but then again, this post isn’t for you. It’s for the person who wants to actively take the first step towards actively changing the way they live. It’s about a commitment towards changing yourself for the better.

Setting goals and realistic expectations is arguably as every bit as important as nailing down the perfect nutrition/exercise plan. Setting goals isn’t only about telling yourself the road is long and hard. Hardly, it’s more about setting timeline expectation. It’s about setting milestones along the road so you can review your progress, check on what is working and what isn’t, and most important, to tweak your plan according to what you see so you can keep moving forward and avoid plateauing or falling behind.

For instance, most men or women who are in it for the fat loss think that it’s about putting in three hours on the treadmill and living off tuna, apples and lettuce for a few weeks. As I mentioned before, that road will only lead to seeming success with underlying fatal health risks. It’s simply not a sustainable mode of life. Being honest with yourself is key if you actually want to switch your life around. Set goals with deadlines. These deadlines don’t mean the road is over, they simply mean it’s time to look at what you’ve done over the past period of time and review whether or not it was working for you. Has your nutrition been on point? Have you noticed your diet needs more carbs? More fats? More proteins? Is your exercise on point? Do you need to switch up the kind of cardio you do? Do you need to lift heavier, or lift more? It’s all about these tiny little details.

Es hatte auch anders sein können

That’s emblazoned eternally in ink forever on my right outer thigh, and the German idiom simply translates to “It might as well have been otherwise”. In the context I found it in, it was about how the smallest and seemingly most insignificant of details are the ones that end up with the largest effects. Little things carry more weight collectively. It’s about the attention to details. Details as simple as quitting that daily can of Coca Cola, or replacing your sugar with honey for your morning tea, walking up the stairs instead of taking the lift if your destination isn’t too far up.

Little things.

Aside from planning ahead realistically, it’s just as important to leave your ego at the door. A lot of us assume that we can do more, or rather, over-estimate what your bodies are capable of within a certain time frame (blame the media for that!) and therefore become quickly frustrated when after an entire month in the gym we don’t look like those assholes on the fitness magazine covers. Your ego is largely responsible for that. You should learn never to compare yourself to others, and most of all, fitness professionals on magazine covers. You work a 9-5 (or longer if you’re me), you have responsibilities, errands, maybe kids, or even demanding pets (you might be me). Those people’s entire lives revolve around being fit, they get paid and get sponsored by supplements companies to look the way they do. You’re a normal human being operating under entirely different parameters, and it only gets worse as you get older and the responsibilities stack up.

You’re not going in there to squat 100 kgs on your first leg day. You’re not going to be doing jump-clap push ups and one handed hanging raises by your second week. Progress is termed so because it is progressive, it happens over time, and it takes time. There are no shortcuts if you want sustainable gains and successes. Cutting corners always ends up in failure; there is no other way around that.

Make a plan. Stick to it. Set milestones. Review it. Tweak it. Progress always.

Check yo self before you wreck yo self!

Discipline for Dummies: Get Real. Real Fast

Prepare yourself, this post is longer than usual, and it’s about me. (Vanity o'clock!)

I treat my body like a machine. I fully control its desires, needs and cravings. I do not cave in to desserts laid out on a table at the office. I do not crave a pizza at 3 AM. I do not indulge in candy. I do not indulge in the local delicacies while travelling. Most of all, I do not consider myself a normal human being.

How I’ve come to be so strict in regards to my fitness and nutrition discipline spans over the course of more than four years ago when I started this fitness craze. Little do many of you know, but I was not always the self-proclaimed fitness Messiah I am today. In fact, I was quite the opposite. I was the guy who’d order the extra Chicken McDoo alongside their Double Big tasty combo with supersized fries, coke and an extra chocolate sauce Sundae. I was the guy who’d chill in front of the TV with a tub of zalabia and other sweets completely oblivious to the meanings of the words “calories”, “body fat %” and “cardiac arrest”. Yep, I was that guy. I was also remarkably shorter than I am today (by almost 10 cm) so weighing in the mid-80’s for someone who was barely 165 cm was not a pretty scene. I had the J Lo ass, the Fat Albert tummy and the Marilyn Monroe muffin-top love handles. Don’t even get me started on my B-cup man tits.

I don’t have any fat me pictures (definitely not topless ones) so the below will have to do for reference on differences between the past and present.

Moi, circa 2009/2010, about a year into my fitness journey (bad photoshop skills on display to remove someone’s head who would not appreciate appearing on this blog post)

One Summer vacation day (I believe the year was 2008/2009) I woke up utterly repulsed by the figure I saw in the mirror. I used to be quite into sports as a child, being on professional teams for Squash, fencing and martial arts. What happened? How did I let it get so bad? When did this even happen? How could I be so blind? So I made a conscious decision. To take a step in a drastically different direction and to never look back.

It was the stupidest decision I ever made.

Before you rush into thinking I regret being a fitness fanatic, take a minute to calm your tits and breathe. I’m not saying that. It was the best thing I’ve ever done and always will be the biggest gift I ever gave myself. That being said, the decision to embark on a fitness journey without the most basic understanding of the process was the stupidest decision I ever made to date.

I thought it’d be straightforward. Stop eating shit for food. Get moving. Right? No, not right. Not right at all. You see dear reader, I’ve always been a man of extremes. I do everything 110%. Eat junk food? Only eat that. Workout? Workout till I die. And die I almost did. I decided that the sensible way to “shed off the blubber” was to live solely on canned tuna and lettuce and to spend an average of four to five hours a day in the gym between the treadmill, Elliptical machine, stairmaster and stationary bike. I cut out all carbs. All fats. All soda. All candy. All pasta. All rice. And damn near all foods.

I lost 25 kgs in 45 days.

Never ever EVER do that. Sure, some of you reading the above went like “Well shit if I can drop 25 kgs by eating tuna and lettuce and just sweating it out for 6 weeks why the fuck not? Let’s do this!” Trust me on this, it’s not all pink roses.

Before you start off with the congratulatory high-fives and order a few shots to our metaphorical table, you should probably know - if you have the most basic inkling of understanding of health - that the above numbers signal bad news. The human body - unless obese and I certainly didn’t qualify in that category - cannot handle such drastic loss of fat at such rapid a rate. Not to mention the lack of nutrients with a diet composed of two food items. It’s simply unhealthy. It wrecks absolute havoc throughout your body in terms of energy levels, hormone response, immunity and other aspects. For weeks, I was deathly ill, my immunity made HIV positive patients look like they won the goddamn genetic lottery. My joints were aching. I had stomach ulcers. I looked like a death stricken Somali child. I had dropped from 84 kgs to 58 kgs in a mere 6 weeks. And it almost killed me.

Fun Fact: Losing too much weight too quickly can lead to a condition where your kidneys literally drop as they are held in place by existing body fat!

Bit by bit I recovered and started to do what I should have done before taking a single step towards my goal; to study. I read. I read so much I may as well had majored in a few domains in regards to nutrition and exercise. I would crunch through dozens of studies, published articles, peer-reviewed journals and books every week. Little by little, I understood what had to be done, how it had to be done and that - most importantly - it could not happen fast. It shouldn’t happen fast. Ever heard the phrase “What goes up must go down?”. That’s especially true for those who drop too much weight too quickly. It’s simply not sustainable. It’s not sustainable to spend hours in the gym and live on foods even street cats would deem inadequate.

I digress…

What does it take to make it? What does it take to make sure you don’t yo-yo around? What does it take to stop you from reaching over to your phone and weep dialing McDonald’s in your bathrobe at dawn? Aside from self-respect; a choice.

Modern day Ramy. Say hi!

You need to make a conscious choice to improve your entire lifestyle. You need to stop viewing fitness as a specific weight goal, body fat % or particular body shape which you can achieve within a set time frame then slack off till it’s time to re-correct it. You need to understand that a dedication towards fitness requires a dedication towards yourself. You need to be dedicated towards dedication.

The most important step in the process is leaving your ego at the door. Drop that shit behind son. For real. You can’t walk into the gym or track with your ego on your shoulder. It will prove to be your biggest setback. You need to talk yourself into understanding that the process will be - and ought to be - slow and controlled. There are no long term gains when it comes to shortcuts. You need to convince yourself that this requires an overhaul of your lifestyle, to become dedicated to bettering yourself through better quality nutrition and exercising to stay active and to quit unhealthy habits (smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, public masturbation etc.)

You need to understand that slow and steady will ALWAYS win the race when it comes to fitness and health. You need to understand that this is a decision that goes beyond a set time frame, this isn’t about a beach body, this isn’t about getting six pack abs before your next topless occasion, and it certainly isn’t about being a skinny bitch. It’s about a balance.

Once again I must reiterate that I am not a normal person, but thankfully I’m well aware of it. I do not cave to cravings. I do not indulge in “bad” foods. Ever. I’ve simply arrived at that place where I am in that much control, but it’s hardly normal or easy. Most of my friends and family frown upon my disposition and think I am torturing myself or denying myself the goodies in life. That’s just not true, as you’ve seen over the past week with some of the recipes I’ve shared, there are plenty of ways to pimp out your meals so you’re satisfying all your cravings without straying too far off course.

That being said, you aren’t me. You shouldn’t strive to be. What I do has to do with my aforementioned extremes personality. I do everything 110%. If I did cocaine I’d be the best white horse sniffer this side of Colombia. But for now it’s just fitness. One of the best things you can do to help with your dedication to this new lifestyle of yours is balance. You love pizza? Fantastic. Eat pizza! Just limit your frequency of intake and portion sizes. Don’t order a large stuffed crust extra cheese pizza three times a week at night. Have a small or half a large pizza and choose better quality toppings. Add some grilled chicken for protein, add some veggies for fibers, vitamins and antioxidants. Better yet, make your own pizza and control the ingredients from scratch. Here’s an amazing recipe for a pizza made entirely from cauliflower (no flour goes into making it!)

Another helpful tip would perhaps be to establish milestones and checkmarks. No plan is perfect from scratch. A lot of my learnings in fitness came from trial and error. You discover this food works for you while this one does not, this exercise format is better for your muscle growth but doesn't burn as much fat, etc. You need to take this as a learning opportunity as well as set up checkmarks so you can review your progress along the way on this lifelong journey and tweak the plan as desired. You must always re-evaluate, re-assess and re-program yourself. Never get stuck in a plateau, never stagnate and never settle for anything but more.

It's all about choices. You choose to be healthier. You choose to be stronger. You choose not to eat a doughnut. You choose to not let a cancer stick dictate your disposition and have you beg for it. You choose to control your progress. You choose to be a better you.

The most important thing I suppose is for you to find a reason. Something to compel you not only to start, but more importantly, to persevere, to maintain, to keep pushing your limits and to break boundaries. That reason can be anything. It can be a simply decision of bettering yourself. It can be because of a girl or boy you like. It can be because a family member's health was affected on account of improper nutrition/lack of exercise. Your reason is your own. But it must be a reason powerful enough that you could call upon it at times when you feel like you can't do it anymore or that you're about to give up. Your reason must compel you to never look back and to always crave and yearn for more.

I started off around 84 kgs at 166 cm with 30% body fat, went over to 58 kgs at 173 with 12% body fat and currently stand at 71 kgs at 178 cm with 8% body fat. It's a roller coaster, but all good things usually are. If anything it was a great learning experience.

I gather that's about it from my end. You could always share your own thoughts and feedback with me by commenting below. Until we meet again...

If you have any questions or inquiries or would like to read about a specific topic on my blog, please reach out by commenting on this post or by adding me to your circles on Google+ on +Ramy Kandil or by tweeting me @Foxicakes

The Worst Kept Secrets In the Fitness Industry (Part 5): Weight Maintenance & Management

Don’t you just hate how we’re in a constant state of yo-yo-ing? Haven’t you always wondered how your weight can shift by two to three kilograms every other week? Don’t you just hate how you can’t figure out why your body is being a little bitch about weight gain?

It’s science time, bitch!

Let’s take a little trip down memory lane. Specifically some 200,000 years ago right around the time Homo sapiens really made their breakthrough on this floating rock in space. You ought to know what our over-glorified species has evolved since then with hardwired mechanisms for survival just like every other creature on Earth. Much like other animals, we were opportunistic feeders, gatherers and hunters, eating whenever possible because you never knew when the next meal would come by. Fast forward to today, we’ve allocated millions of square kilometers to farmland, grocery stores fill every corner of our streets with foods stacked up further than you can reach, your fridge is within arm’s reach and filled with goodies.

Do you know what the problem with that is? Our bodies simply didn’t have enough time to co-evolve alongside our progression as a species. Your bodies have historically been hardwired for fat storage - for the purpose of survival - and to store a % of consumed food (which was historically consumed over prolonged intervals, sometimes days) into fat. Your bodies simply haven't caught up with the concept that you can eat every hour on the hour. That's why you look around and see obesity rates skyrocketing across the globe. Humans need to understand that their bodies are unaware that we've evolved into growing and hoarding food so close to our hearts. The same concept applies to gaining muscles!

Believe it or not, it's somewhat contradictory to your body's mantra to even put on muscle mass. Your body views it as an unnecessary expenditure of energy and resources towards something that is otherwise used sparingly. Your body is much more geared towards fat storage because fats are an excellent source of energy whereas muscles promote increased functional movement but aren't an optimal energy storage mechanism. And that's not taking into account the actual energy which goes into maintaining muscle mass let alone create it.

Muscle is created when an external force exerts itself on existing muscles, rendering the need for more muscle fiber in order to perform the same movement (lift the same weight) more easily the next time. Weight lifting operates by the mode of creating micro-tears in your muscle fibers, which your body then fixes by filling up those tears and then adding on new fibers and motor units to increase functional strength. But maintaining such muscle mass in the modern era is like fighting an uphill battle. Our ancestors were arguably much fitter and much more capable of holding onto their muscle mass due to their more active lifestyle, whether as hunters, warriors or farmers prior to the automation of the process and reliance on machinery. A constantly active and engaging lifestyle guarantees an easier maintenance of weight due to the interexchange of calories between muscle gain and fat storage/loss. Nowadays though, it's a different story...

The trick here is about ensuring you have a good plan with two attack angles. Step 1: An active routine. You can't expect to labor away at a desk for eight to ten hours then go back home to crash in front of the TV for three more hours and then magically keep your weight and waistline stable. You need to get moving.

A weight lifting routine (girls, don't freak out and go running for the hills just yet you WON'T get bulky and manly looking) ensures that your bones, muscles, tendons and joints are challenged towards putting on muscle mass and burning through fat storages while boosting overall metabolism. Weight lifting also ensures increased bone density which is arguably far more important for women who are at a constant risk of bone density loss on account of pregnancy. Weight lifting routines which are consistently maintained and tweaked every four to six weeks also create a hormonal balance which puts the body in the right state for anabolism (muscle building) rather than catabolism (muscle breakdown).

And remember, when it comes to muscles, use it or lose it. Your body will not waste energy on something that's taking up space and offering no functionality. The process is known as muscle atrophy and it simply means that muscles that aren't constantly engaged and have their limits pushed are broken down into basic elements and their nutrients recycled back throughout your body. If you use the muscle, it will grow and stay there.

Step 2: Nutrition Plans. No, I'm not talking about counting calories. I leave that shit to Victoria's Secret models and celebrities. Normal people who have school, university or desk jobs don't have the luxury of having teams of people whose sole occupation is to ensure they look good. Which bring me to a good point. Stop comparing yourself to celebrities and their physiques. They operate on entirely different levels. They are paid to look like that. Their lifestyle revolves around that. You can't expect to achieve the same levels while leading your normal life with all its shit and giggles. But I digress...

Your nutrition plan needs to account for both your active routine as well as your largely sedentary lifestyle (which you need to change!). That means that meal timing is everything. Don't munch on apple for breakfast and reach out for the chicken and pasta before you sleep. Eat heartily when you wake up. Your body needs the energy and your body is likely to burn through whatever you eat for breakfast (unless it's ice cream, which it shouldn't be, unless your name is Willy Wonka). You should eat a good combo of proteins and complex carbohydrates before your workout and a similar meal after your workout when your body needs nutrients the most. Your dinners should be consumed at least three hours before bedtime and should focus on giving your body something to do while you snooze (think Cottage cheese) with snacks throughout the day including fruits, nuts or yogurt.

What you need to do is be honest to yourself about this. It's not easy. Acknowledge it. It's not a short trip. It's not a one off trip till you reach some fantasy goal. This is a lifestyle. Your weight will still - to a degree - bounce around until you find that balance and learn enough about yourself, what affects you, what works for you, and what doesn't. You might discover that dairy makes you bloated and you should cut it out, you might discover adding oats to your diet helps you lose belly fat, you might figure out that drop sets workout for your muscle building capacity than normal sets, etc.

Take this as an opportunity to learn about yourself, your body and what you think you can do. The results may surprise you.

Remember that your body doesn't know what you're doing, it doesn't know you want to hit 10% body fat and look like a model at the beach. It doesn't care for your muscle building. It's a cold calculating machine which allocates resources (and strips them off!) as necessary. All your body wants to do is to store some fat and ensure that your dumb ass survives long enough to propagate and spread your genetic material down into the genetic pool. 

You need to control it, don't let it drive you around.