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The Deception

In order to have a lean body, one has to eat certain foods–quality foods. Foods high in sugar should be avoided. Though all carbohydrates convert to sugar or glucose, you want to avoid the ones that shoot your insulin through the roof. These are known as noisy foods. They create the big bang, such as cookies, cake, chocolate, sweets of all sorts, caffeine etc. They produce that deceptive feeling that all is well. Then the moment of truth arrives. The blood sugar level drops. The high is gone. Instead all that is left are your emotions on the floor that you must pick up or simply repeat the same cycle again.

Foods can create an illusion for us. Isn’t this idea seen in the Garden of Eden? Satan presented Eve with the fruit, telling her to eat for she would be able to distinguish between good and evil like God. So she ate. Ah, it must have been good, for she offered it to Adam. He ate. Then the moment of truth arrived. What had they done?

How often have we fallen for a similar trick? For example, you think a glass of wine is what you need to relieve you from a stressful situation. Or how about a bag of chips or cookies? Your body has deceived you. Your mind followed. If only you had not listened to your body. That instant pleasure has now turned into an hour of cardio or a year or two years or maybe five years or more to pay for this sin.

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Aging Gracefully: Choose Ye This Day Fat or Muscle...

Wednesday morning around 5:15 a.m. driving down the highway still in between the world of dreams and world of reality, I decided to exit and workout at the gym where I used to personal train. I was happy to see the same guy was still working at the front desk. One of the members recognized me across the gym floor and joined me to do some cardio. He was a man looked to be in his 50’s always bright-eyed and smiling in the morning. I was pleased to see him and commented that he had certainly found the fountain of youth.

He replied, “You know all of this is a waste of time.”

I asked, “what do you mean? You look great.”

He, then, went on to say, “you know when you reach thirty, it’s hard to put on muscle after that.”

I said, “that’s true, but it’s not a waste of time. It depends on how you look at things.” I continued. “Personal development is good, but we are to use our energies to help others.”

When we were done with our cardio, I went to the locker room to shower. I met Christine, who I had not seen for a long time. Christine was a dietitian who looked to be in her late forties. When Christine saw me, I thought something was wrong. I mean something was wrong.

As if I were a priest, Christine just blurted out that she had been bad.

“I’ve been so bad…things got so busy and crazy at work that I stopped coming.”

“Yeah, but you’re okay though?” I asked.

“No, I’ve gained all this weight.”

When I looked more closely at Christine, she had gained some weight. Below. “But you’re back in the gym.”

Christine said she had started weight training, and that it was weight training that helped the fat to stay off.

I jokingly said, “so the books are right?”

“Yes, they are.”

Christine and my bright-eyed friend had discovered one of the neglected areas in training; that is weight training. Some people who do exercise tend to limit themselves to simply cardio, ignoring resistance training as an important component as well. Both cardio and weight training are necessary as inhaling and exhaling is to the body. Weight training helps us to lose weight, and it also helps to prevent the loss of lean body mass through the process of aging. It is said that after the age of 25, we begin to lose 10 percent of our muscles every 10 years. Because muscle is a metabolic tissue, the loss of muscle causes our metabolism to decrease, leading to weight gain in the form of fat. However, with a weight training program in place, the body can maintain a certain degree of muscle. Choose ye this day: fat or muscle? I would choose muscle since for each pound of muscle, the body can burn an additional 50 calories at rest.

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