Chronicles: Alan B. Rowley II - Success Warrior - ECoach - P90X

The Engine 2 Diet

I just finished reading The Engine 2 Diet: The Texas Firefighter's 28-Day Save-Your-Life Plan that Lowers Cholesterol and Burns Away the Pounds.  It's written by a tri-athlete (Rip Esselstyn) turned firefighter who changed how his fellow firefighters eat to turn them into lean, mean, low cholesterol, fire fighting machines.

Rip promotes a plant based way of eating and says that if you follow this diet, your cholesterol will most like be in great shape after 4 weeks.  By great shape, he means under 150.

Most doctors are fine with a cholesterol level under 200 but Rip states that 35% of heart problems occur in people within that 150 to 200 range.  It's better to get under 150 if you really want to protect your heart.

My cholesterol has always been right around 200 every time that I have had it checked so I'm going to give The E2 diet a try and see what happens. 

I tried going raw not too long ago and I felt great but made a great tactical error.  I didn't research any recipes so I got bored rather quickly.  That and my bodybuilding-trained mind couldn't get over the fact that I wasn't eating sides of beef while training.

This time I'm going to compensate for those short comings.

First, my goal right now is to get lean and quick.  I want to pick up my running pace.  This is a great time to drop the extra protein and pick up the extra plants.  My running was nearly instantly transformed when I went raw (which kind of sounds like I was running naked and *that* would definitely transform my running experience).

Second, I've started looking for recipes online and will probably purchase a couple of cookbooks.  The E2 Diet comes with over 100 recipes too so that's where I'm trying to start.  A lot of it looks very foreign to me.  I haven't been much of a vegetable and legume kind of guy but I'm willing to give it a try.

If you want a quick rundown on the benefits and instructions for a plant based diet, I can recommend this book.  It's a quick read since half of it is recipes.  Rip makes his points quickly and moves on and even made me laugh in a couple of places.  There are little stories that go along with many of the recipes, which is kind of fun.  I think this is a great gateway book into a new way of eating.

Heat + FUEL + Oxygen = Burned Calories

 

Continuing the discussion (and unfortunately it's going to have to be very short tonight), the next ingredient for burned calories is fuel.

Way too many people are putting sugar in their gas tank. 

It is possible to be overweight, exercise like a madman, and not lose weight (guilty as charged).  With today's calorie bombs, it's very easy to put more calories into your body than you expend.  Not to mention that with our wonderful brains, we are also figuring out how not to do things.  As our technology increases, it becomes more and more important to watch what goes into our bodies.

What goes into the body is more important than exercise but for a high quality of life, I wouldn't leave either one out.

Three of the most important fuel sources are water, fruits, and vegetables.  By increasing the amount of these foods, you will automatically decrease the stuff that may not be as good for you.  This is, in fact, one of the big problems with the Western diet.  It's not just that Big Macs are not good for you (or poisonous in my case), it's that by eating them, you are choosing not to eat something healthy.  Every choice you make is a decision against everything else.  When it comes to food, this presents a double whammy.  By eating cancer causing french fries, you take up space in your stomach that could be used for cancer curing vegetables.  By drinking soda pop that causes symptoms of MS, you are not drinking cleansing and hydrating water.

The good news is that we get to choose.

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Please remember to support my college efforts by visiting my BeachBody site.

HEAT + Fuel + Oxygen = Burned Calories

  Check out the size of his . . . carabiner.

  You need three things to burn calories: heat, fuel, and oxygen.  Today, we discuss heat because it's the easiest.

Humans are heat generating machines, just like we learned in that great documentary, Matrix.  Everything we do creates heat.  Just being alive creates heat.

We can create more heat by exercising, specifically with resistance exercise.  Aerobic exercise creates heat but ironically, burning calories may not be the biggest benefit of aerobic exercise.

Me, I like to do both at the same time.  Today was a seriously killer plyometric workout.  Do not try this at home if you don't have a strong heart and great knees.  This thing was intense.

I really need to get my video downloading ability fixed because words are not going to do this justice.

We did five exercises with 30 seconds rest between each exercise and we did that 4 times.  It was looking seriously pathetic by the 4th round.

The first was box hops where you hop gently off of a box or other sturdy structure of about chair height.  When you land, you go all the way down until you touch the ground, then spring up into the air.  Step on the box and do it again.  As many times as you can in 60 seconds.

Next we flipped the box on end so that it formed a diamond and we hopped to the corners around the box and the changed directions and went the other way.  Keep going for 60 seconds.  Much harder than it sounds.

Third was what I call knee-touch lunge-jump switches.  A long name for a quick exercise.  Lunge out with one leg and then rest your back knee on the ground (if you have a soft surface).  Jump up in the air and switch your feet and go back down to a knee.  Try doing that for a minute.  I did it for 20 seconds and finished the last 40 seconds by stepping instead of jumping.  Quad burner.

Fourth was jump knee tucks.  Jump up in the air bringing your knees as high as you can in front of you, touching your hands to your legs.  No time limit.  Do as many as you can.  After everything else, I was only able to get 30 per set on these.

Last, and by no means least, lateral box cross-overs.  Stand sideways next to your box (or sturdy chair height structure) and put the closest foot up on the box in the middle.  Jump to the other side of the box so that the foot that was on the box lands on the ground and the foot that was on the ground ends up on the box.  Now go back and forth as fast as you can for 60 seconds.  "As fast as you can" starts to look pretty pathetic around the 40 second mark.

Take 90 to 120 seconds break to wipe the tears sweat out of your eyes and then repeat again.  We did two sets 2 weeks ago, 3 sets last week (when I had food poisoning and was seriously on the verge of heaving it all up), and today we did 4 sets. 

I promise that you will find muscles over the next couple of days that you never knew existed.

Now, I have a special plea for help.  I'm going to be going back to college for the fall semester, probably full-time, which is going to be quite the struggle in so many ways.  One of those ways is financially so I'm going to be asking for help from my readers.  Please support my cause by purchasing something (anything) from my BeachBody site.  They have their great DVD programs, exercise equipment, and nutritional supplements, and all proceeds help me avoid getting a student loan (a worthy cause if I ever did hear).  Thanks.

A Blog on the Fringe

I've been doing some soul searching for the last couple of weeks and this blog has suffered as a result.  I've been trying to figure what to be if I ever grow up.  I haven't come up with any solid answers but I do know what I'll be doing for the next 3 months and how it will relate to this blog:

1.  When time permits, I'll find a pic for Mark (alternating with some eye candy for the women) that in some way relates to the blog.  "Fringe" was an easy excuse.  You're welcome Mark.

2.  Get to work overtime on getting my personal trainer certificate.  I haven't done a thing on it because I've been on an extended break since the college semester ended.

Btw, the class that I was worried about not getting an "A" in, I received an "A".  So how cool is that?  I got by Associates with a 4.0 gpa.  A huge difference from my pitiful attempt at college 20 years ago.

3.  Continue to read about spirituality, the psychic world, living in the right brain, and post any thoughts to this blog.  Right now, it's really caught my attention ("Look, something shiny!").  I will probably have to slow down on the reading but it has been a wonderful break for that.  I have to memorize a lot of stuff for the personal trainer certificate so that's where my attention will have to be for 3 months (I'm hoping that I can complete it in 3 months anyway).

4.  Continue blogging and hopefully put more than 50 words in my posts.  I was considering just giving up on my blog but that doesn't feel right.  I'm going to post what ever strikes me for that day but considering #2 and #5, don't be surprised if a lot of this blog is centered around fitness and health.  I had been posting each night at 8 mst and that will end.  Posts will go out if and when they are done and may even go out a couple of times a day if the mood strikes.  The bottom line is that I feel I need to write but I won't make any promises on consistency.

5.  It's time for me to dive back into some fitness craziness.  I'll be continuing with my early morning classes but I'm going to be throwing in another session in the afternoon on a pretty much random basis from my growing DVD collection.  I'm sure some days will be pretty tough and other days will only be mildly tough.  I'm also going to be faithful to my running, which has been hit and miss because of stuff and weather.  I'm going to be adding sprints in on Saturdays.  It's time consuming but every time I do one of these little self-challenges, I feel so energized.  I'm going to be out of town today so this will start tomorrow.

6.  Today's trip to the city is for the sole purpose of getting better lighting for my garage.  In the next 3 months, I'm going to get some of my workouts online for those of you that are interested to see what I'm doing at 6am every weekday.  The first hurdle is lighting.  The way that I finished my garage to cut down on the echo factor has made it very dark.  I need to get it lit up.  Second, I have to figure out how to get my video easily from my camera to a website.  I was able to download and upload the video of the donkey basketball but I tried to do the same a month ago for some karate techniques and it was a complete fail.  I need to be able to do it consistently and without consuming too much of my time.

There are a few other minor things in the plans but that's the general plan for the next 3 months.  Now, I'm off to get some lighting and a medicine ball.  I'm going to be adding some medicine ball work in every once in a while.  It's on one of my DVDs. 

So, I've Actually Lost My Mind

More on that story on another day.

In the mean time, a piece of eye candy for Mark. 

 

Check Out This VeloMobile!

 

How sweet is that?  Love the blurred motion that makes it look like this guy is zooming down the road at high speed and maybe he is.  I read a blog where a guy got his velo up to 42 mph on the flat.  Downhill, you could probably reach any suicidal speed that you wanted.

Besides the phallic-ness of this thing, it also has headlights, brake lights, turn signals, and a horn.  There is an optional covering for those rainy days.

 

I can just see myself cruising in this thing, just for fun.  Never mind commuting. 

In my current situation, I can't justify buying it with the "it will pay for itself" mindset.  Since I live 120 miles from a city, I'm going to have to keep the Hummingbird for real travel.  That means that I will still have to pay insurance and registration.  All that's left is the gas that I use to drive around town.

I probably spend $30-$40 a month on gas for the Hummingbird.  It would take me 20 years of driving to justify the Velo.  Too bad too.  However, the prices of velos are bound to come down, the price of gas is  bound to go up, and I may just end up buying one for fun anyway (with a side benefit of using it to commute).

I'm going to print up a couple of pics and ask the Universe to deliver. 

An Even Better Hybrid

Excuse the couple days off that I took.  My mind wandered off on its own again and I've been out looking for it.  During my trip, I managed to get food poisoning (a story that I'm not going to go into because it shows how stoopid I am).  I was actually thinking about taking a few more days off (like indefinitely) but I got an email from Ray with a great resource that I need to pass on.

If you recall, my last post, oh-so-many days ago was about better vehicles.  Well, there's a new (new to me at least) hybrid on the market now.  Part electric, part human.  No gas at all.  How cool is that?

"Heh, heh, he said mono-cock."  "Shut up Beavis!"

No gas, no insurance, no registration fees (a biggee in Nevada).

Obviously, there are some limitations.  First is the shock factor of paying 10 grand for a bicycle.  It would of course pay for itself over time but still.  I read several articles on the velomobile after Ray sent me the email and the price is expected to go down as they get more popular.

Weather is still a limitation, especially for people in the north but this would give an option during the rest of the year.  They make them with complete shells so that it can be ridden even in cooler, wetter weather.  They can be ridden in the snow but the single wheel for propulsion gives limited traction so you may end up pushing if you have to go uphill and there are no windshield wipers.

Most of the limitations actually come from the crazy lifestyle that we have created.  By "we", I don't mean me.  In Utah, it's not uncommon to commute 60 miles or more to get to work.  I have never commuted more than a few miles to work because it just seems too crazy to spend that much time in a car.  It's supposed to be very easy to cruise at 20 mph in a velomobile but a 60 mile commute is obviously out.  They could be used to commute from the suburbs to public transportation (which would have been easier to do if we wouldn't have dismantled so much of it).

Another limitation that we have talked about with SMART cars and the GM/Segway electric car is the size.  Where there aren't bike lanes, you have to share the road with Yukons that might not be able to see such a low profile vehicle.  Defensive driving would be a must.  Can you believe that here in big West Wendover (pop. 5,000), we have bike lanes?  Nice.

The other limitation for some people is that part of the hybrid power comes from humans.  Some humans might find that revolting.  I won't bother telling them that they make a pure human power version.

For me, I love this idea and I'm going to look into getting one.  For my lifestyle, this would work perfectly. 

Ray, do you have a link for the company that is making yours?

Speaking of Cars

"They have a following on the Internet."  Ya think?  This is what people are hungry for.  This is why GM is bankrupt.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that. 

Our Trip to Saturn

Trey and I took a trip to Saturn yesterday. 

The Hummingbird needed some work done on him to keep him humming along nicely.  I like this car and want to keep it running for another couple hundred thousand miles (because I think it might take that long for car companies to pull their head out - more on that later).  Rick brought up a concern that I also had.  How do you drive a car 150 miles that needs mechanical care?  You don't let things get too bad.  Maintenance and catching things quickly becomes very, very important.

Trey and I dropped the car off and caught light-rail to go someplace for lunch.  Riding the train is the highlight of the trip if you ask Trey.  Observe:

 

Then he tried to see how cute he could be.  How do you think he did?

 

We went to a place called the Gateway.  One of the entrances is through an old train station.

 

A painting inside, in memory of the meeting of the east and west railroads:

 

A stained glass window:

 

We walked along checking out all the different stores, trying to find some place to eat.  They had a couple Mexican places, Italian, Brazilian, pizza, Japanese, and some thing called Island food, which I'm not sure what that's about.  I let Trey pick so we went to a sandwich shop.  He really wanted Mac & Cheese so I tried to guide him toward Italian.  He picked the sandwich shop though and he was guided true because not only did they have Mac & Cheese, they also had free ice cream cones.  Score.

We did some shopping.  What do two guys shop for when surrounded by a hundred different stores? 

Shoelaces.

I broke one of my shoelaces on my cross-trainers that morning so we spent a whole $2.50 during our shopping.

The whole trip took us a couple of hours.  Trey was pretty much burned out on the shopping so we went back to Saturn.  On the way, we walked by this building and Trey wanted a picture:

 

When we got back, the car was no where ready so we had to kill some time.  We did it by taking a bunch of pictures.  I took a couple but Trey took a bunch.  Gotta love digital.  He could just take pictures of anything that he wanted.

 

 

Here's a picture of me pointing out to him that this new hybrid gets 34 mpg.

 

And here's the sticker on the most prominently displayed vehicle at the main doors.  It's also a hybrid with the word "Hybrid" done up in large letters along the doors on each side along with some kind of green symbol, which is probably supposed to symbolize that this is a green car:

 

32 on their most prominent vehicle?  34 on the other one?

The Hummingbird gets 35 mpg.  It's a 2002 with no extra cool technology. 

7 years later, technology that is supposed to be better is actually worse, and they charge you more to buy this technology.  You can pay hybrid prices for worse mileage than plain old gas. 

Is it any wonder at all that car companies are going bankrupt?  Their whole marketing plan for the last couple of decades has been, "This car is new, yours is old, come buy this shiny new one."  By old, we're talking 3 years old.  People were rolling the existing loans over from their "old" cars onto their new cars, putting themselves seriously upside down just so they can have a new car.

Seriously, since anti-lock brakes and airbags, has anything been added to vehicles to make them better?  New body types (over similar or worse engines), creating the SUV as a status symbol, throwing in iPod docking station.  Do any of these things count for much?  Can car companies honestly say they have added any quality to the vehicles they've been pawning off on the TV programmed consumers? 

Now that people have to watch their money more closely, is the "it's new" marketing scheme going to work?  For your TV commercial, can you do donuts on the Salt Flats in a car that gets 25 mpg and convince people that it's going to be fun to drive?  If the economy ever shows signs of actual recovery, gas prices are going to head back up over $4.00 a gallon.  Is your 25 mpg car going to be fun then?  I can tell you that my 35 mpg car was an absolute treat when gas was over 4 bucks. 

I feel bad for all the employees of car companies.  It's not their fault that the people in charge have made their own product nearly obsolete.  Sure, we need cars as a replacement but people are going to hang on to their cars longer when there is no actual reason to buy a new one.  If this one works fine and that one's not any better, why buy it.  Cuz it's new?  Not anymore.

I own the Hummingbird free and clear, don't pay much in gas (I have a 3 mile commute), don't pay much in insurance, and I won't be replacing him until there is something much better that's worth the price.  I looked at a year old Prius when I bought the Hummingbird.  With the difference in price, I figured I could drive the Hummingbird for a couple hundred thousand miles before the cost of gas would be more than the cost of a used Prius.  Puh-lease.  So, that's my plan.  Drive my car until the break even point or until car companies figure out how to add affordable value to their vehicles.  Right now, it looks like the Hummingbird and I are going to be long-time friends.

My Stroke of Insight

I was going to do a post or a series of posts on how to burn calories but that's going to have to wait because of a lack of time.  Trey and I are headed to the city today to get some work done on the Hummingbird (my car).  I'm not sure how long it's going to take for them to do what's got to be done and I think my calorie posts are going to take a bit of time.  Maybe not.  I don't know but I want to leave myself with that option.

I suspect that I'll be posting about our trip to the city.  I'm going to take Tia's camera along for the ride.  I don't know that anyone else will find a simple trip to the city interesting but Trey and I will probably just wander around on foot while they work on the car.  If the weather cooperates.  The forecast calls for thunderstorms.  That might put a real damper on the whole walking thing.  I'll take a book for me and the DS for Trey just in case we end up stuck in the waiting room.

I finished My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey.  Thank you again to Lynette for sending it to me.  It's an autobiographical tale of a doctor and the stroke that she suffered and her recovery.  The left hemisphere of her brain was shut down for a while, giving her a whole new insight into life from the right side of her brain.

I've been looking into right-brain living (Lynette knew this, which is why the book arrived on my door step) and it was interesting to read about someone that was forced to live completely in the right brain, completely in the moment.  No past, no future, no speech, no inner chatter, no beginnings or endings.  Everything seen as connected, blurred together, without borders.

She has the use of the left hemisphere again but the visit to the right has become a permanent part of her life, something she tries to relive at will.  The cool thing is that we don't have to have a stroke and spend 10 years in recovery in order to access the right brain when we want.  It's available to all of us and the more people that choose to access the right brain, the sooner humans will take the next step in evolution.

As usual, I will be sending this book on to anyone that would like it (first come, first serve).

The book that I will be taking to the city as my back up plan is Cracking the Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America's Original Vision, sent to me by Rick.  I'm going to learn how to speak Politics.  It will be handy when I run for office.