Food as a Reward

A common mistake made by many people is rewarding working out with food. This mistake is common and very understandable. However, it can lead to some disordered habits. Habits that can lead to a halt in progress and a negative view of exercise.

When you think of food as a reward for exercising, you tend to think of exercise as this taxing chore that allows you to eat. This is an unhealthy relationship to have with both food and exercise. I used to have the exact mindset of Well, I workout so I can eat whatever I want and If Chad Ochocinco does it, so can I. Well, that’s bullshit. I can speak from experience. For a time I went completely overboard and was slaying McDonalds, Taco Bell, and KFC. Sometimes all in the same night. As I ate I told myself that I had worked out earlier so it was fine. I wish. Eating shitty food all the time no matter what you are doing for exercise is not good for your health or performance.

Many times, when we have the food-as-reward mindset, we tend to undo our training or exercising. Meaning if you burned 500 calories during exercise, but then stuffed your face with 1500 calories after, you just undid your efforts. Let’s now take a look at the opposite of that mindset. When you do not workout, you feel guilty. The guilt causes you to not eat at all. We can not think about food and exercise in this manner. This not only is detrimental to your physical health, it is also an unhealthy mindset as well. Food is food, exercise is exercise. Though the two should be related in some aspects, action and reward should not be one of them.

When you eat as a reward to exercise it usually leads to the feeling of guilt. On the other hand, if you eat something such as a donut and you didn’t exercise, guilt will weigh on your mind again. You want to avoid feeling like shit, or having guilt. Disassociate the two.

My coworker, Joey Percia, had recently explained to me the 80/10/10 rule, which I think is amazing. 80% of your food intake should be foods you like and happen to need; 10% should be foods you don’t like but need; and the last 10% should be foods you like but don’t need, such as donuts and stuff. This helps to set up a much healthier relationship with food where you are able to eat whatever you want, just modified portions of each.

Overeating is good for putting on weight. So, if you want to do that then stuff your face. But, if you want to maintain or lose weight, overeating (even if you worked out) is detrimental to your progress. Exercise because you know its good for you and eat well because you know its good for you. Nuff said.

How Do I Tone X?

How do I tone my arms? How do I tone my legs? How do I tone my stomach? How do I tone my ass? All questions I have been asked a million times.  Questions I don’t mind at all though I am not a fan of the word tone.  However, I want to have a place I can send someone the next time they ask me the question. So here it is.

Disclaimer: I am very much an advocate for strength so my answer may seem biased towards it. However, that First off, let’s start with what you mean when you say “tone”.  How do I tone the back of my arms often means how do I firm that area?  And this is usually what is meant every time the question is asked regardless of the body part. It either means how do I firm an area or make an area more defined. Interestingly enough, the words firm, define and tone all can be replaced with the word strengthen. How do I strengthen the back of my arms? How do I strengthen my legs? So we’ll hop back to strength in a second.

When you want to tone an area, there is a very important first step that must be done. You need fat loss in that specific area you wish to tone. Everyone has biceps, triceps, abs but often times you can’t see them because a pesky layer of insulation (aka fat) is obstructing your view in the area. Unfortunately, you cannot choose where your body wants to lose fat from so you just have to be patient and enjoy the process of training. I know you may be bombarded by products and exercises that allegedly are able to “burn belly fat,” but I am here to tell you- all bullshit. Save your money. Those waist trainers do not burn belly fat. Green tea extract-nope.  Crunches, nah.  Planks-eh eh. You cannot choose where you lose fat from. I repeat, you cannot choose where you lose fat from. Remember jabronis, there aren’t any shortcuts, and if there are they probably bang you up pretty good in the long run.

So to tone an area you need to lose fat there especially when we are talking about toning the stomach. Also, you need to build strength in the area, aka pick some shit up and put it down. Resistance training is often the missing piece to many people’s active lives.  They get a lot of cardio in, they spend hours on the treadmill and participate in spin classes but resistance training is the missing piece. “I do 45 minutes of cardio every day but still can’t see my triceps”. This is specifically due to the lack of resistance training in their training regimen. Resistance training is a major key to becoming “tone”. Resistance training is training performed using an external force that causes your muscles to contract. This can be done using bodyweight such as pushups and pullups, actual weights such as dumbbell and kettlebell exercises or even band resisted exercises.

Building muscle in areas that you wish to tone can be done, unlike spot reduction of fat. However, I do not advise just working the area you wish to tone but to train your whole body. Training your whole body will help promote fat loss as well as help to create a balanced body. As the process goes and you keep after it for a bit you will become toned and strong and powerful. This does not happen overnight but you should be glad because if we could lose 20 pounds overnight we surely could gain it overnight and that would suck.

Remember, my goal is to make you all find the Power of Strength so don’t be scared to pick some shit up, put it down, and move your bodies all around. If you have any questions http://www.powerofstrength.com/contact/ feel free to contact me on there or Instagram @powerofstrength or facebook. Smell you later. 

Think Before You Eat

Pizza, “Nom nom nom.” Chips, “Nom nom nom.” Grinders, “Nom nom nom.” Chocolate chip cookies, “Nom nom nom.” I love food. I really love it and I do not think there’s a single thing wrong with that. Here’s where discipline comes in. I do not eat these things every day, nor when I eat them, do I eat them in excessive amounts. My good friend and I used to go in on pizza. I’m talking mounds of meat, lots of cheese, some crazy sauces. We would each eat an equivalent to a whole pie. So, I can eat a lot if the challenge presents itself. Initially, it was not that simple to resist stuffing my face. It wasn’t until I started practicing mindfulness that I was able to be aware of my eating habits.

Oftentimes we are not aware of how much we are eating. Practicing mindfulness will help us become more aware of what, how much, and when we are eating. There are a couple of exercises that will help build strength in the area of mindfulness.

Timing yourself while eating is a great way to become aware of how much you eat. It also helps you slow down and allow the body to realize when it is actually full. On many occasions we wolf down food like a rabid animal and think, Man, I am not full at all. Then, boom, it hits you like a ton of bricks and your stomach feels like a solid mass ready to erupt. Eating slow will allow you to stop eating far before feeling full and far before you’re going to #2 yourself. This is my favorite trick to help fix peoples food habits. You can use your phone’s handy timer feature. Set the timer to 15 minutes and then make sure you still have some food left on your plate by the time the alarm goes off.

Another exercise that I love for developing eating awareness is to avoid technology.  Move your ass off the couch and away from the TV, cellphone, or computer. Sit and eat with your thoughts concentrated on what you are doing in the moment. When we sit in front of a TV or computer we are not aware of how much food we are shoveling in to our mouths. Usually it’s a lot. When we sit and eat with no distractions, we are aware of what and how much we are putting into our bodies.

Once you are more aware of what you eat and how much you are eating, it makes it easier to concentrate on when you are eating and why. When you are paying attention to the act of eating, you can start to think about the reason you are eating. Ask yourself some questions. Are you eating because Sally is eating, or are you actually hungry? Are you eating because you are thirsty, or are you actually hungry? Are you eating because you don’t want to share your food with me, or are you actually hungry? I’d be happy to eat your leftovers, haha, so do not worry about not finishing your meal.

Look, I love food, I freakin love it. But, I understand there are responsibilities that I have and I owe it to my health and my wallet. Understandably, this stops me from eating the entire fridge at once. I definitely slip up at times. That is no excuse to indulge all the time just because I know I can’t be perfect. Perfect is not what we are striving for. Remember, something is better than nothing. Practice these drills, as much as you can, until being disciplined is the easy choice to make. You will be well on your way to finding your strength grasshoppa.

Normal Not to Love It

Training, or working out, was something I needed to do to get to where I wanted to go. My girlfriend recently asked me if I always like working out and, if not, what made me switch. In a quick and mundane answer, my response was progress. I was driven by progress. Once I saw progress I was hooked.        

 I had many start and stops when it came to me trying to get into working out. My first attempt of working out was entering my freshman year of high school. The Ledyard Colonels used to have team lifts during the summer. This was supposed to be a way to build strength and camaraderie as a team. However, on day one in the weight-room I realized I was by far the weakest person in there. I felt overwhelmed. I stuck around for the rest of the workout then never went back to another lift for the remainder of the summer. All throughout high school I would go to the gym here and there to “lift,” but I was going through the motions and hated every second of it.  I excelled in sports so I didn’t see the need to workout.

 It wasn’t until the end of my junior year that I started to think that strength could be my missing piece. I owe this realization to the only football camp I ever attended. Once again, I was the weakest kid there according to standards of strength. The summer proceeding that camp was the first time I strength trained fairly regularly. My senior season was the strongest I had ever felt. This was clearly as a result of consistent training. However, once the season was in progress, I stopped working out and did not resume until the summer after I graduated high school.

 Realizing then that I wanted to play college football, somewhat late, I sought out a trainer one of my teammates had been training with. This kid was a tank. I knew I didn’t need to be a tank, but rather competitively faster and stronger. I figured this guy could help me and he did. I started seeing this trainer as well as working out on my own. In that summer I put on 10 pounds which was amazing because I didn’t think it was possible. However, even more important was my strength gains. To see where I started from to where I had ended up by summers end was the most gratifying experience. That progress was what really brought me to start liking to work out. I was hooked, I Loved the confidence it bestowed upon me. I loved the idea of tracking progress, whether it was using a weight that was 2.5 lbs heavier than the week before or doing more reps than I could the week before. Bottom line, I was hooked at that point and I have not looked back since.

All of that said, it is important to know that it’s absolutely normal and understood that you may not like working out at first. Be consistent for a month or two. Hire a trainer if you can. Then, once some time has gone by, search for progress. However small you may think it is, hash any progress as a win. It could be that you were consistent for two weeks, which you had never done before. It could be that you went to the gym 3 times in a week, when the most you had gone before that was 1 day. Small progress is still progress and it is something to get excited about. It means you are better than you were yesterday. Let this mindset change your attitude toward training. Learning to love the process and steps it takes to become better is what will make you strong in the end. After all, it is the Power of Strength we are working for. 

Positive Thought

Thoughts come from you. Someone can't tell you what to think. Oftentimes we don't even know why we are thinking about something, they just seem to pop into our heads. This is our subconscious at play. If you want to gain the full power of strength, you have to learn how to manage thought’s impact on actions. This is where the power of examination and positive thinking come to play.

When we hear about positive thought and positive reinforcement, we usually think, “get that zen-bullshit out of here.” I was definitely one of those people. I thought I was just being real. In reality, I was being pessimistic. So much so, that I was voted class pessimist my senior year of high-school 😳. I walked around thinking if something wasn't handed to me, then I wasn't meant to have it.  However, I have since had a change in mindset. I can now say with confidence that believing in something, either positively or negatively, will impact the outcome.

I was at a low point during college where I just felt like I was wasting away not utilizing my skills and just being a lazy POS. I decided I wanted to play football again. With this decision, I completely put my mind to it. My actions then followed those thoughts and beliefs. I knew I could and would make UCONN’s football team. I fully believed in myself and my goal. My high self efficacy helped me make those beliefs become reality. I suited up the very next season. Had I still had my pessimistic view of life, I would have continued down that path of barely going to class and indulging in a little too much glaucoma treatment. I wouldn't be where I am today had I not changed my outlook.

What changed? A lot changed. For me, it all stems from just thinking more positively. I control what I can, which happens to be my actions. So, if I can't control a situation, I know I can control how I react to it. This is one of the most valuable lessons I've learned. It has helped to make me a fairly disciplined individual. If you find your self thinking negatively, try examining the thought. See if the thought is justified or if it's just your mind being paranoid and cautious. Throw some positivity in there and see if you can turn the negativity around. If doubt crawls in, forget that noise. Try to think of what you can do, not what you can't.

Saying you can't do something is giving yourself an easy excuse to not do. I read somewhere recently that, “The ‘I don't have time to (fill in the blank)’ is the adult equivalent to, ‘my dog ate my homework.’” I couldn't agree more with that statement. I look at some of the most successful and busy people currently, Gary Vaynerchuk, The Rock, Kevin Hart, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Ferris. All of them make time for exercise. So, instead of focusing on the can’t, focus on the can. You can show up to the gym with an open and positive mind, ready to grow and get better. If you focus on not being able to squat 500 lbs day one, then it's hard to enjoy the ride. Then, it's much harder to be driven to show up every day. Making a list of things you can do goes a long way towards turning thoughts into action. It also helps to gain a more positive mind and better self-image.

Thinking is believing and you must believe in yourself if you want to get the results you seek. We are all capable of achieving almost whatever we want, as long as we actually believe it and are willing to put the work in towards it. Believe in yourself and think positively. Once you're able to do that, you will see some serious improvement in how you feel about yourself, the world, and others.