Tag Archives: health

Looking Better Naked

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A very popular fitness program of the last few decades uses the sales pitch, ‘Look better naked’ and that is exactly what we want when we diet to lose weight. We want to look better to ourselves and we want to look better to the people whose opinion matters to us for whatever reason. Good looking people get more interviews, have access to better jobs, can get better salaries, life seems easier for them so we want to be like them.

Diet and exercise is what got them there, those attractive people we would like to be one of. They eat the right amount of food, get the right amount of exercise and that is how they stay that way. So, how can we compete with that? Here is the answer:

Eat exactly right>>exercise the right amount>>arrive at your perfect weight, this is so simple I cannot believe we hadn’t thought of it before!

The thing about eating right is that what and how you are eating is going to change as you change the make up of your body. From day one you carry more weight, have an elevated BMI, less muscle mass and less energy than your ideal you. To address the first two issues you must change the amount of calories you consume on lets say a weekly average basis. Simple calories in, calories out. In order to change the amount of muscle mass that you carry you have to increase the percentage of protein in your diet to compensate for the body’s recovery needs without going below your threshold maintenance caloric level where the body starts burning muscle for energy. You cannot replace the protein calories you are adding by just eating less carbs, you need those for basic metabolic functions that get you through the day. By the same token fats can’t be cut out entirely either, they are really important to the body’s immune system.

Thinking that one diet or one program will get you to where you want to be is not going to work. It is going to take a lot of trial and error to learn what your body respond to. Start with calorie deficit, that will get really hard after 1 or 2 weeks but if you have a backup plan already thought out then when you realize it is getting to the breaking point, (mine is when I start making excuses to not go to the store) be ready to switch over to plan B even if it takes a day or two. Calorie deficit took me from 330 to just under 300 but now I need to do something different because salads are no longer sexy. Those early morning walks are too easy and I am still to heavy to start jogging.

There is a guy named Mehdi that has a website and a Youtube channel where he explains a weight training plan that is ultra simple, it is called Stronglifts 5 x 5. Stay on that for two months without significantly changing your calorie intake and see what happens there. I have done this several times and it is great, not too much and just enough to make a difference. Start small, make small gains, over time the change is very noticeable.

Weight Control Made Easy

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A simple spreadsheet to keep track of my morning workouts helps me stay on track and gives me an idea about how I am progressing and where I can fine tune things. I have modified this to include daily weight and daily food intake in calories to get a better idea of how I am progressing. There will be additions to the table once I start to include additional workouts.

As I have said before, the daily weight figure is there for reference only, there is no reason to obsess over that number, the numbers to pay attention to are the daily workout numbers and the daily calorie number. Being consistent is how we control this and get to the goals we have set for ourselves.

As we get older it becomes more important to find ways of staying active that are not as demanding on our bodies and I really enjoy cycling, it is nearly zero impact and I never get tired of putting miles on my road bike. Most larger cities these days have incorporated bike trails into their municipal parks and it is a great way to burn serious calories if you just budget some time for it. Sunup to sundown, except for days with rain or severe wind is perfect for a bike ride. Once you get comfortable putting in a few miles a day, contact your local bike club and see if you can get together with some of their members for a morning coffee ride or an evening no-drop spin. Club dues are very reasonable and can come with some very nice perks. Our local club gets hefty discounts at all of the local bike shops and they sponsor picnics and a yearly swap meet. Believe me when I say this, fresh air is very addictive.

I use a tool from the WebMD website to calculate calories in the food I eat, the address is https://www.webmd.com/diet/healthtool-food-calorie-counter. I try to do this at home and if I am away from the house I have a notebook to keep track of anything I eat out. Keeping a strict log of every thing that I eat helps me train my eating habits and helps me stay away from things that just don’t belong in my body. It also lets me know when a small treat is in order, it is very important to maintain your BMR calorie intake to keep from getting so hungry that we might be tempted to undo the work we have begun.

A word about fat loss. Being happy in our skin is the goal here. Looking for results can be frustrating and here is why. Fat is stored in the body relative to blood flow, as the level of sugar in the blood climbs, insulin is released to signal fat storage is needed. The areas of increased blood flow also receive the most insulin, so more fat is stored there. The reverse is also true, when your body starts to burn fat, it burns it from the areas that have the most circulation. By walking in the morning we increase the circulation in the legs and torso, a large percentage of the body’s mass, when fat burning occurs as a result of this it is going to be very generalized, only when the fat stored in these areas is reduced substantially will fat start to be burned in other areas. This is why patience is so important to good long term habits, you have to KNOW that what you are doing is working, your eyes cannot see the differences as the changes that occur happen over a very long period, but they are working. Over time you will see the correlation between your caloric intake, the work you do and your weight, that is what the chart will tell you. And in time you will see the results. Best of luck, keep trying to be the best you, every day.

Bit by Bit We Get Better and Better

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This morning as I was getting ready for the morning walk, I noticed a little muscle soreness in my backside, no doubt due to the daily walks. I was half expecting this, it has to happen as muscles that haven’t been used in a while are called back to work. This is easy to fix and here is how. Since there is some discomfort I only did one mile and afterward I used airsquats to stretch the muscles involved to keep the blood flowing and allow healing. Your quads and glutes, the backs of your legs and your ‘sitter’ are some of the largest and strongest in your body and they also recover faster than most. To do an air squat you stand erect with your feet a bit more than shoulder level apart, arms forward and parallel to the ground, tighten your abs and push your butt back while sitting down and then stand back up. If this is too hard then simply bend at the waist and try to touch your toes, ten times will do it, your done.

If you have been weighing yourself every day you may have noticed that there is a substantial difference during the week. This swing has nothing to do with fat loss, it is all about water weight. Once you get really regular with your hydration, that will settle down. Remember, if my calorie intake matches my BMR and I walk 1 mile a day it will take me 8 months to lose 10 pounds, this is a long game, changing bad habits and developing life-long good habits. Once I get to my goal of walking 3 miles a day, doing just that while maintaining my BMR will burn off 30 pounds in 8 months and keep it off because I have made positive changes in the way I eat to manage my weight. The best motto I have for that is, “Well begun is half done.”

All of that may seem a like a bit of a wet blanket but that is because you are looking at a number on a page. To get an idea of what weightloss really looks like lets take for example an 8 pound fat loss. What does 8 pounds of fat look like? Look closely at a 1 gallon milk container, that’s the size of 8 pounds of fat, almost exactly. Now losing a pound or so a week begins to look much better.

Having changed my second meal of the day to a salad, a bowl of greens doesn’t sound too attractive after 3 or 4 days of the same. I get creative, use 3 or 4 ounces of chicken or tuna, add a spiral cut zucchini, avocado, cottage cheese, plain yogurt, etc. Spicy Italian dressing is my go to, only 60 calories per serving, 2 Tbsps doesn’t sound like much but you would be surprised. Spinach, onion, Zucchini, a can of tuna, sunflower seeds and dressing runs about 400 calories, can’t go wrong. Starting next week I will be starting a food journal to keep track of the calories I eat, showing changes that I make to vary my energy intake.

Fight the urge to do too much at once. Every change you make should be in a positive direction, things that get started and then left by the wayside are distractions from the direction that you are trying to go towards. Small steps repeated over and over are the key to good habits that will serve you well going forwards. The first week I planned to walk a mile a day and I did exactly that, 7 miles for the week, total calories 1050. My second week I was tempted to just double it and I didn’t because I wanted to keep my goal small and achieveable, as a result I walked about 2 miles only half of the time but never less that 1 mile a day, the result, 1600 calories burned in the second week. I believe that continuing success is much better in the long run than trying to exceed your current capacity and risk injury or frustration in the beginning of the process.

Monday is the start of Week 3, I will outline the whole journal process and things will start to take shape.

Diet and Exercise

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If you did the groundwork from the last post you have a calorie intake target, a general idea of good carbs and bad carbs and starting point for getting more fit and less fat. Lets start right in on fitness, that morning walk I took every day for the first week was good. Got up, cranked up the circulation and did something for 20 minutes first thing putting up 150 calories on the work side of the fit/fat equation. Monday of the second week I wanted to know what my walking speed was so I could increase my walk a bit without spending all day at it. I use an app called MapMyRide, been using it for about 10 years and it works like a charm for stuff like this. Here’s how it works:

  1. Open the app and click on add workout
  2. From the dropdown menu choose walk
  3. When you are ready hit the start button and it does the rest
  4. After you have finished hit stop and Bob’s your uncle.

For the second week I did a 2 mile walk in 40 minutes, that works out just fine. Now the second day, Tuesday, my knee was feeling a little weird so I only went a single mile, didn’t want to start any issues and Wednesday’s walk was fine, no more knee problems, logged about 1.75 miles, different route. I will listen to my body and alternate 1 and 2 mile walks for the time being. Sometimes less is more. The point of the morning walk every day is good habit building, nothing more. I will show you why here.

I am trying to work off fat, with diet and exercise. One pound of fat is about 3500 calories. The one mile walk every day will burn off one pound of fat in 24 days if I stay below my BMR of 2400 calories a day. But, as I become more active, my BMR will go up and fat will be metabolized faster, but only if I keep doing what I am doing every single day. I should be able to move to 2 miles a day by the start of next week, barring injuries, etc. My goal is to get to 3 miles every morning, walking, not running, there are too many negatives to a running program and frankly the extra calories burned by running instead of walking just aren’t worth it.

We fixed breakfast last time so now lets get with lunch. You want your second meal of the day to be a salad, get that good fiber and some tasty add ons and get to munching. Iceberg lettuce is useless, there, I said it. No taste, no nothing. Enough said. Spinach. Fresh spinach in a 10 oz. bag, about $2.50 and good for 4-5 salads, easy. Put a big handful into a bowl, chop some onions, olives, pickled okra(you knew I was from Texas, right?) green peppers, throw on sunflower seeds, chop up some raw peanuts or cashews and drown the thing in Ranch dressing, or whatever your favorite is. Do not buy Light, or fat free dressings, they have lots of crap that you don’t want in our body in there to replace the calories they take out. Cut down calories from dressing by using less dressing, simple. Get creative, leftovers can be a great change of pace ingredient in a salad.

Hydration is essential to good health and something that a lot of people take for granted. Don’t be one of them. I keep a clear gallon pitcher of plain water in my refrigerator. Not that I am going to drink the whole thing in one day but I fill it every night before I go to bed and at any time during the day I can look at the pitcher and tell if I am getting enough water or not. Again, simple.

There it is, walking a little farther, salad for lunch and hydrate. Next time we’ll dig a little deeper but this should be plenty for now.

Weight Management

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I’m in my 60’s, it is not as easy as it once was to manage the ups and down of body weight, especially the ups. You see, the good things in life that I used to indulge without a second thought, breads, pastries, doughnuts, dooooooooonuts, pies, pizza, etc. are not my friends any more. The simple truth is, it is a lot easier to gain weight than it is to lose it. Sugars and simple starches are taken in, broken down into simpler sugars, entering the blood stream where the body adds insulin and is then stored as fat. Simple and easy. Once stored, fat has to be broken down in a multitude of steps until it finally leaves the body through the lungs as carbon dioxide. Not easy on a good day!

The basic method to control your weight is diet and exercise. Rule #1 is this, throughout the day your body uses a set amount of calories to function. Depending upon your age, weight and level of activity this amount varies. Getting an idea of what your caloric need is is the first step to getting your weight under control. There are many websites that have very simple calculators that will give you a very close calorie number in only a few keystrokes. Do this right now, open a new window, google daily calorie needs, fill in the form, profit.

1. Get your daily calorie number, memorize it for later use.

*** https://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html ***

  1. Choose US units tab
  2. Enter age(61), gender(M), height(6’5″), weight(325#), Activity(Basal Metabolic Rate/BMR)
  3. Hit Calculate and my number is……2397 calories per day to maintain my current weight
  4. Your turn.

There are 3 components to all of the foods we eat, carbohydrates, proteins and fats. As far as calories are concerned, carbs and protein contain 4 calories per gram, fats have 9 calories per gram. Starting with carbohydrates, there are two basic categories, simple starches and fiber. These names describe their activity in the body rather than anything else, I use them strictly for illustration. Simple starches like cereal grains, breads and sugars are a major concern to us since they contribute directly to the production of body fat.

Rule #2 cut down on simple starches.

For example, don’t eat doughnuts, pastries, cereals and the like first thing in the morning. Juice is bad as well, most juices have a ton of sugar added. If I start my day with a cinnamon roll and a glass of OJ I get: roll, 310 calories, 9 grams of fat, 54 grams of carbs, OJ, 8 oz. Tropicana, 120 calories, 28 grams of carbs. A total of 82 grams of carbs!

Change your morning like this, substitute a couple of eggs and some bacon and a glass of milk instead. 2 eggs, 143 calories, 10 grams of protein, 1 gram of carbs, 2 pieces of bacon, 87 calories, 7 grams of fat, 6 grams of protein, 8 oz. milk, 149 calories, 8 grams of fat, 8 grams of protein, 12 grams of carbs. A total of 19 grams of carbs, some difference, huh? Instead of relying on carbs to get you going, the change is almost all protein and fat, the good stuff. 430 calories versus 379 calories but the real story here is how we have backed off on carbs, from 82 to 19.

2. Carbs are bad, fat is good, change your diet for the better.

Now that we had a little bit of diet, let’s talk exercise. For the purpose of this discussion, exercise is anything that you do that you don’t have to do. Keeping it simple, walking is hands down a great way to get yourself going. Having said that, how do you get going? Pick a time, earlier is better, when demand on your personal time is low. Mine is 4-5 a.m., simply because it is before I have to get myself together and get going for the day. Here is how it works, I wake up, get out of bed and immediately put on sweats, t-shirt and my workout shoes. I don’t do a lot but I do it every single day. I start with a 1 mile walk, I don’t worry about time, just relax and keep going. I have a figure 8 loop around two blocks in my neighborhood that is exactly 1 mile and all I have to do to increase my workout is to do an extra lap. Walking in the early morning there are very few cars on the road but you should wear a very bright colored t-shirt or windbreaker anyway so that you can be seen.

3. The hardest part of working out is starting. Get up, get dressed, get going.

Let’s review: We have a number that represents how many calories we need to maintain our weight, we can change the way we eat our first meal and we have a plan to get more active, every day. Is this something that you can do, it sure is. Let’s see what we can do.

Diet and Exercise?

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You know that losing weight is 90% diet and 10% exercise, right? Well, sometimes is seems more like 99 and 1 to me. Dieting or more specifically ‘calorie reduction while maintaining strict macro control’ is a lot harder than it sounds. So hard in fact that after many years of trying, I finally hit on one approach that is currently working for me, a minimalist approach that occurred to me almost by accident as I was attempting to script another menu in a long list of unsuccessful weight control attempts. I work nights and usually eat when I get home, if I eat during working hours on break I eat too much and I can’t control macros or calories, so what I did was to sculpt the one meal that I had complete control over and virtually ditch all of the other food that I was eating for a bit.
Now, starving yourself is self-defeating, I know this, there are things that your body needs to have and will begin to fail without. So I looked at where I wanted to go and steered myself in that direction. I weighed in at 314, big even by my standards and I wanted to drop some large pounds, but without killing myself in the process.
Looking at the big picture, I put my ideal weight at around 215, but that was a long term goal. A good short-term goal in my mind was to drop 10% of my body weight, mostly fat ideally, and use this benchmark as a jumping off point. Once I had attained the first goal I would reassess where I felt I was at, make sure that I stayed as healthy as possible and make a new and improved goal to start in on. 10% of 314 is, let’s say, 31.5 pounds. In fat loss terms that would represent a dietary caloric deficit of 110,250 calories. Figuring my daily calories for current weight maintenance at around 3250, I designed my diet intake meal as 6 eggs, 1 can of tomatoes/chilies, 16 oz. milk, about 830 calories total, a 2420 calorie deficit. The plan looks extreme but take into consideration that my food intake is mostly protein and fat which, over time will trigger ketosis, which is what I am trying to do and that when I am in ketosis, my body will burn fat for energy instead of carbohydrates so external calories will be augmented by internal calories from body fat. Also included in this regimen is daily doses of vitamins and fish oil. I expect at least one cheat day a week, where I may consume some carbs, no potatoes, no bread, no grains of any kind, though. Today is 5 weeks that I have been practicing this restrictive diet and my weight has come down to 286.6lbs. as of standing on the bathroom scale 30 seconds ago. I feel better than I have, I don’t feel bloated like before, my clothes are fitting better, I have started to wear the old 44’s again. Once I hit my target, 3 pounds to go, I will start incorporating daily weight-training into the mix so that I can gain strength and elevate my fitness level, and take advantage of not having to move an extra 30 pounds all of the time. I never would have thought that this would work and I don’t suggest that anyone try this, I tried everything else, this was in fact the last straw for me. I try to live by a few golden rules and one that has gotten me through many tough times is, “Well begun is half done.” Wish me luck, I will be posting more as time, or rather time off, allows.

Too Much Time Off Is A Bad Thing…

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front-squat
I’ll just say it, I hate programming my own workouts. Nothing makes me feel more clueless when trying to get back into the gym and back on track than deciding what to do and how to do it. I can find so many reasons why other programs won’t work, don’t have this piece of equipment, can’t perform that movement, whatever, time will just drag on and the weights just get dustier.

Off due to a new job and a new sleep cycle, it has taken several months to get in the swing again. I was feeling apprehensive about my squat technique and other problem areas so I decided to start slow and get some light reps for practice and ramp the weight back up as good form would allow. Since complicated doesn’t excite me, I started with a few main movements and added in accessory work as the opportunity presented itself. Here is what the first week looked like:

Monday through Saturday:
Easy Curl, bar only, add 5# each day, 50 reps
Ft Squat, 5 reps @, 45#, 65#, 95#, 115#, 135#, 145#.
B Press, 3×10 @, 95#, 115#, 105#, 115#, 120#, 125#.
GHD Situps, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

I chose 6 on and 1 off because I wanted to reestablish the gym habit, the small number of movements and the lighter weights were chosen for the same reason. The easy curl bar I picked up at a flea market, never used one before so I thought I would use a high rep scheme and see what weight felt right, by the end of the week 50 reps was about all I could handle. Front squats are all about elbows up and knees out, my technique was spot on and by Saturday 145 felt really smooth. I was really confident that my bench was not horrible so three sets of ten with a light/heavy rotation felt good. I made a GHD machine a long time ago and I never use it so I added the situps for fun, a warning here, you can really mess yourself up doing too many of these at once and the damage won’t show up for a day or more, hence the very slow start.

I have been thinking a lot about muscle confusion and thought that since I had started programming weekly that maybe I should change up the workout each week, not completely but a tweak here and there to hit different areas different ways. Here is what week two looks like:

The easy curl starts at 30# for 30 reps, then 25# for 30 and finally 20# for 30 reps in drop set fashion, just enough time to change plates between sets. The idea here is to work to failure, adding 2 1/2# to each set when all sets are completed in one workout. Fractional Olympic plates are tremendously hard to find, I use 2” construction washers, they are about a dollar a piece and weigh a shade over 9 ounces each, close enough for government work, eh? The squats are now back squats so that heavier weights can be used and more concentration put on body position and keeping the knees out on the way up. I also switched to three sets increasing the weight each set and breaking the work into light, medium and heavy days in a M, H, L pattern. A 5-3-1 scheme 135/145/150, 145/150/155, 135/140/145 Monday to Wednesday and then adding 5# to each weight for the remaining days will help me get acclimatized to increased work in the coming weeks. I went with four sets of six reps and changed to an incline bench to work a different area of the chest this week with weights of 105/110/115/120/125/130, a sort of rest week for bench. My GHD routine will start at 2×3 adding one rep a day and should get me to 2×8 on Saturday.

My suggestion would be that if you are coming back from a layoff for whatever reason, do something but start real slow, the benefits will be there when you get back. Getting hurt or sore just makes it that much harder to keep going to the gym and that is the goal. Be creative, have fun and enjoy life, words to live by.

The Pyramids

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299.8

classic-food-pyramid
If you grew up in the United States you have undoubtedly seen the “Food Pyramid” that shows the different food groups and how many servings of each we should have every day to stay healthy. Now, if you have been following fitness trends over the last ten years you have also been exposed to the “Paleo Diet” which basically flips the classic food pyramid upside down, contradicting most widely held theories about nutrition and health. The pyramid graphic is a highly intuitive reference tool to simply and quickly outline the concepts of many different subjects. One very interesting pyramid for the fitness enthusiast or serious athlete is The Transfer of Training pyramid.
bondarchuk

Developed by Dr. Anatoliy Bondarchuk, a pure genius in the sport of track and field, the Transfer of Training principles broke all exercises down to 4 basic groups:
1. General preparatory exercises, those movements that utilize different muscles and energy pathways than the competitive event(in the original sense, the hammer throw)
2. Specific preparatory exercises, using the muscle groups and energy pathways of the competitive event but a different movement pattern.
3. Specific developmental exercises, targeting the same specific groups and pathways and including parts of the competitive movements.
4. Finally Competitive exercise, including the event itself and some variations.

These principles made training programming much easier and more adaptable to the individual. Although developed for the hammer throw, the pyramid can and is working in many other sports, swimming, cycling, running, all one needs to do is to examine a competitive event and break down it’s movements and categorize your training exercises in a similar way. Here is a link to those wiser than I.Link

Crunching the Numbers

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306.4

runners

 

Rule 34 states that ‘If it exists, there is porn of it.’  I believe that in the realm of health and fitness, if one person has had an idea, two other people have figured out how to count it, collate it, and quantify it.  One such idea is the Banister Impulse/Response model.  The idea was at first to figure out if, by recording all training efforts, an increase in fitness could be calculated by means of an ordinary differential equation and the answer given in the form of positive training effect, or PTE.  It almost worked.  For every positive training effect there is a negative effect, that being fatigue.  Rather than shoot down the original hypothesis however, this little fact seemed to have perfected it.  When the PTE is plotted against the NTE over time along with actual performance an interesting and quite repeatable effect is shown.

F6.large

Skipping all of the math, we see that at the beginning negative effects, basically fatigue, outweigh the positive effects of training.  As performance starts to improve the positive effects become substantially greater than the negative.  This model has been tested for many endeavors, running, cycling, swimming, and seems to work similarly in all of them.  More here.

 

I have a confession to make. I fell off the wagon, yes, stopped making fitness a priority and forgot about eating right and it got me. On top of not making weightloss goals and feeling pretty low from the lack of endorphins, I got a chronic hip pain. So I am back at square one, actually square zero, I have lost the ability to squat temporarily. I am slowly rehabbing the range of motion while I try to catch up in other areas.

It is iced tea season once again, there is 3 gallons of the stuff in the refrigerator right now, good hydration is one of the very basic things I am concentrating one as the summer progresses. Purging useless carbs, refined flour and sugar, and getting back to fresh greens and such. Baby steps, the goal is not a ‘diet’ but a lifestyle change, a permanent one.

Prying myself away from the computer screen is underway. Walking the dog a mile at a time, up to 3 times a week now to mobilize the hips and get the wind back. Weight training again starting with Bench, Deads, Lat pulldowns and Power cleans until the squat comes back.

Workout:

Dog walking= 1 mile, large dog, his pace not mine.

Food:

8 oz, sausage, 6 eggs Calories 1376 Protein 81.8 g. Fat 95.8 g. Carbs 0 g.

10 oz. Grd beef+ 2 med onions 518 cal Protein 45 g. Fat 31 g. Carbs 11 g.

Chinese buffet Don’t judge me.

 

Cardio-Like it Or Not

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bann1305#

As I have mentioned before, respiration is the primary mechanism for removing fat from the body. Cardio training is the best way of elevating respiration to a level that will effect this removal.

The best method I have come upon is HIIT, High Intensity Interval Training. The acronym may be new but the general principles remain the same, small sessions of extreme effort broken up by short rest periods. How does this work? A story to illustrate…

In 1954 Roger Bannister had decided to break the 4 minute mile. To do this he broke the race down into laps, 4 quarter mile segments. Each day that he trained he ran 10 quarter mile laps at a pace just under 1 minute each. By doing this he, in effect, ran two sub-4 minute miles every day for a month or more. His purpose in doing this was to engrain in his muscle memory the pace that he needed to maintain in order to achieve his goal. At a track in Oxford on May 6, 1954 he finished the mile in 3:59.4.

HIIT works by elevating resting metabolism beyond the amount of time that you actually exercise. If your workout is 30 minutes long you don’t have to workout at maximum intensity for the whole 30 minutes, the work/rest cycle follows the formula ‘2x’ on/’x’ off, typically 30 seconds work followed by 15 seconds rest repeated 10 times without stopping or some variation. Movements that lend themselves to this model are sprints(run a distance and walk back), burpees, box jumps, jump rope, bear crawls, tire flipping, you get the picture.

My workout today was a 1 mile run, in 15:38. Before you average guys(5’10”, 150#) start talking smack, think about this, I weigh in at 305, if you think you can run a quarter of that with a 155# barbell on your back then good on you. Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither was my ‘ab’ but I’m working on it.