Bring IT! Part III: Team No Excuses in March

Hello everyone! Sounds like we're all doing well with the workouts and excited for warm weather. I am! I will start running outside more when it gets consistently warm. Bringing it with nutrition as always...

My younger brother is 14 and in 8th grade. He is probably considered morbidly obese (5'10", 230), and he desperately wants to get in shape and lose the weight. He's decided to start working out with me every night at 7:30 and I'm soo excited for him! I also sat down with him and mapped out some goals as well as what habits he needs to break as far as his eating goes. No more popcorn at night; he's going to be taking a protein shake instead. I also gave him a box of Pure Protein bars to have so he can eat something before his track practice (he throws shotput and discus). He won't come home ravenous then. His short-term goals are to be around 200 by August, and to be in better shape for football season. Ultimately, he wants to get in the 180 range, which is a much healthier weight for someone his height. I can tell he's hurting sometimes because his friends joke about his weight, but he was honest with me last night and told me that it's time for him to do something and make a fresh start for himself before he enters high school. He's tired of being the guy that all the girls are friends with, but no one wants to date! I'm so proud of him for sitting down and telling me how he felt, and I think that we're going to have a really successful summer!

Obviously, I'm excited for him! He is also going to write down everything he eats throughout the day and then tell me later so I can enter it into MFP...eventually he will be able to keep track himself when I teach him more about portion sizes and carbs/fat/proteins, etc.

I can't wait for it to get warmer out!

P.S. I also picked up a book by Science journalist Gary Taubes, titled Good Calories, Bad Calories. It is extremely controversial, but I believe that it explains a lot about our bodies and if nothing else has a lot of strong scientific arguments. It should be an interesting read and I'm positive that I'll learn a lot from it. There's also a movie out called Fathead which is a sort of parody of Supersize Me; I'm interested in it because Morgan Spurlock, the guy who did Supersize Me, never allowed his food diary to be released. There is a lot of mystery behind how he managed to gain sooo much weight using his preplanned rules. I'll have to see if I can find it.

Finally, I'm starting to delve further into the roles that politics and government funding play in the development of our nutritional guidelines and other things related to the FDA. Very shocking information that I am finding...as we all know, scientific research depends heavily on funding, and if the studies don't turn out the results the investors want, well, let's just say, it can be swept under the rug or downplayed. It's also making me realize how the personal biases of the researchers themselves, as well as their research pool, can be skewed to make the data match their hypothesis, even if it doesn't. That's why I get frustrated when people post links to study after study here, not even considering the fact that many of these studies could possibly be skewed by a multitude of factors.

Anyway, if any of you like to read, you might find some of these books interesting. (I can't stop reading)


M

Just finished Shoulders and ArmsX with the lil bro...he's working hard but he's doing it.

I'm Korean too, though I'm adopted so I have been exposed to American ways my entire life; as in food, habits, everything. It might explain my chubbiness a bit too; hey, I'm Midwest. We're meat and potatoes here. Maybe it's from the all the German descendants? Who knows...but I know that if I grew up in Seoul, I'd likely weigh about 50 pounds less than I do now. :laugh: :laugh: Anyway, my friend, who grew up in Korea, took me to her house once and let me eat some Korean food that her mom was making. Well...eekk. She tried stuffing a piece of dried seaweed wrapped around rice down my throat, and it was gross to me. I'm not a fan of kimchi either, but Korean barbecue is delicious. Anyway, if I remember right, it tasted really salty to me, and I definitely wasn't a fan. I do love me some Indian food though, because curry is spicy and kind of makes you sweat, but you love the pain! However...another side note, even though more than 50% of Indians are vegetarians, they have the highest rate of heart disease in the world...coincidence? It does make me think a little bit, because animal products seem to get criminalized a lot in American society.

Good Morning everyone! Thanks for all the support with my brother. I bet he's sore today, as I'm just introducing him to weight-lifting...even I feel it this morning. Hello shoulders.

Is anyone else annoyed by all those High Fructose Corn Syrup commercials? They're sooo stupid. I went to the website and checked it out, and HFCS meets ALL requirements for what the FDA considers "natural". That's an easy cop-out for saying that no, it's not actually natural, but it meets the definition. Dumb dumb dumb....

It's nice and sunny but cold today. Booo. I think we have KenpoX tonight. Looking forward to it!