Fit People Aren't Hunting Werewolves

Photo by Naypong

"Wow!" people tell me. "Your body transformation is remarkable!" I can tell that much already, since they're making remarks.

"Tell me," they continue, "how you've done it. I want to do the same thing."

Usually, they don't mean this. What they really mean is, "I want to know where you bought your silver bullets." They want to shoot werewolves more than they want to overcome.

Truth be told, I don't blame them. When I was mired in the misery of my former lifestyle that made me so overweight, I felt helpless to get better. Even though I actually knew what to do, the thought of making the right changes overwhelmed me. Until I made them.

Now, egotistical as I am, this isn't to hold myself up as the paradigm for getting in shape. It's a series of observations, starting with one from a conversation I had yesterday.

Unidentified Individual: I want to do what you did. Tell me your secret!
Me: I just eat well and workout.
Unidentified Individual: Oh. Well, never mind. I'm not doing that.

It got me thinking. We all want the metaphor I've used above, a special weapon that destroys fat and builds muscle. If it's not a magical juice elixir, or a ultra scientific gadget that exercises for you, it's hard to get excited.

Eat good food and do hard exercise? Go sell crazy somewhere else.

People that are fit already know that it's that simple, and that difficult. They have found a way to make this a part of their lifestyle. Fit people make their health a priority, and life rewards them for it.

They know other things too, none of which are silver bullets. But these are things that they've figured out along the way that have helped them.

Photo by Danilo Rizzuti, 

They're called crash diets for a reason
Don't find yourself in a wreck. Find a healthy eating lifestyle.

They're called workouts, not easyouts
Do something hard. Your body will thank you.

The workouts need to change
Don't do the same workout every day. Progressively make them more challenging.

Maintaining is a just another word for backsliding
Constantly strive for the better you. Get stronger, faster, and fitter.




Keep transforming. Keep regenerating.

No More Diets!

Working out plays a tremendous role in fulfilling those health related goals, but there's an old saying, "You can't outrun your fork." A true healthy lifestyle consists of proper nutrition, as well as regular exercise.

This is where many people think, "Uh-oh. That means I have to go on a diet, doesn't it?"

Please don't. In fact, can we abolish the word, "dieting," once and for all?

Temporarily starving your body is one of the worst things you can do, both for weight loss, and for overall health. Crash diets never focus on the root issue. Slashing your calorie intake, and giving up certain foods for 30 days may result in temporary loss. Still, one of two things are likely to happen. Either you'll find yourself giving into cravings during the program, or at the end of it you'll go right back to the behavior that made you diet in the first place.

There's a better way. Whether you want to lose weight, or bulk up on muscle, the key to success is making lifelong changes that promote the body you want. To that end, here are three ways you can begin practice healthier eating today.

1. Make Incremental Changes

What if I told you that today you had to give up all sodas (diet or otherwise,) limit your consumption of all grains, cut out liquid calories, only eat meat that is grass fed, and for goodness sake- stay away from sugar? Oh, and you'll be skipping desserts, passing on the chips, staying away from processed foods, and so on. And so forth.

Admit it. You'd look for a different to blog to read, wouldn't you?

Depending on your goals, and individual needs, those would be great nutrition choices. But, if you actually tried to make all these changes at once, chances are at some point you'd fall off the wagon.

Incremental changes are easier than drastic ones.

So what if I asked you to make one healthy change today? Then make another one next week. And another the next. You'd be much more likely to succeed.

So look at this list, pick a change, and start it today. Congratulations. You're already improving your health.

2. Eat Real Food

If you're already looking to eat better, then hopefully you're reading nutrition labels on food. Even without changing anything about your lifestyle, being aware of ingredients is a fantastic start.

It doesn't matter yet if you don't know the difference between High Fructose Corn Syrup and Maltodextrin, here's a general rule. The less ingredients, the better.

As you make those incremental changes in step 1, be moving towards eating less processed, and more real foods. Real food includes meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts, eggs and so forth.

Eating this way gives your body the protein, nutrients and good fats that it needs, regardless of your overall health goals. Just as importantly, it limits the things present in so much of the food industry that destroy your goals, such as artificial ingredients, refined grains, carcinogens and sugar. Speaking of which...

3. Limit Sugar

Sugar is addictive. After all, it tastes great. Not only that, it sets off a chemical reaction in the body that ultimately leads to pleasure. When we eat sugar, the pancreas releases insulin to regulate it. That balance is hard to match though, which leads to too much insulin. That results in a sugar crash.

How does the body react to this crash? It wants more sugar.

Here's the issue with that. The body uses sugar to do two things- for energy, and to store fat. In excess amounts, all the body can do is use it for fat.

This leads to a swarm of health issues including obesity, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.

Limiting your sugar intake will help you make great strides towards true health. This is where reading nutrition labels comes in handy, because the food industry hides it's amount of sugar by wording it several ways. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but sugar can also be listed as High-Fructose corn syrup, Glucose, Maltose and Lactose.

Another way to quickly check is to read the amount of sugar grams on the nutrition label.

There you have three easy ways to begin a healthy lifestyle, not one of which includes dieting. Eating healthy may include lowering your calorie intake, but it never means starving. 

Keep transforming. Keep regenerating.

Regenerating. Time Lords, Eat Your Hearts Out

My Regeneration

In the universe of Doctor Who, the Doctor has the ability to regenerate. His body undergoes a transformation, causing a complete physical change.

This generally happens when he has been injured, or otherwise gone through enough bodily stress to warrant a new self. Time Lord's like the Doctor can do this automatically when their body needs it, or they can trigger the change on their own.

Think about it. How marvelous would it be to build a new body from scratch.

I have good news. You can do exactly that. Unless you're a Time Lord, it's a slower process for us humans (and if you are a Time Lord, I'd love to see your Tardis,) but we do it every day. 


In April of this year, the doctor told me I had to go on blood pressure medication or drastically change my lifestyle. Notice, that's "doctor" with a little "d."

I generally don't tell people how quickly the transformation took place for me, because frankly, even I find it ridiculous. I'm not sure what my April weight was, but sometime before that I weighed in at 250 pounds. At 6'0, that's a bit too much, right?

Today I weigh 188 pounds. And what's more, I gained muscle and can do things with my body I couldn't dream about before. Well, I could dream. But that's all.

How did I do it, you ask? You did ask, right? Even if you didn't, plenty of others have.

`1. I Eat Healthy

You've heard this plenty of ways. "You can't outrun your fork." Combine that with, "You are what you eat," and you're on the right track.

I don't diet. I put good food in my body. Yes, to a certain point, weight loss can be about calories in < calories burned. But weight loss and health aren't always synonymous.

I'm not on the paleo diet, but it's close. I don't eat gluten, and limit all other grains. My food consists mostly of meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, berries and olives. There are exceptions, but not many.

The human body really does regenerate. And it does so with the food we put into it.

2. I Enjoy My Workouts

This wasn't always true. At the beginning, it felt too hard. I couldn't move. I perceived through this. As my fitness improved, I found the things I loved doing.

For me this includes swimming, one of the best full body workouts out there. It also involves a variety of free weight and body weight exercises.

You may not enjoy them at first, but the sooner you find the fun exercises for you, the sooner the transformation can begin. And you may find, as I did, that things you hated before are fun- once you can do them.

3. I Get Stronger. I Constantly Improve

Early on in my training, I came across the 300 Sparta Workout. I'll blog about that in the near future. It's a workout designed by Mark Twight, the trainer responsible for getting the actors in shape for the movie 300. He is quoted as saying, "Appearance is a consequence of fitness."

When I read that quote, I thought he was mad. Appearance was one of the number one reasons behind me getting fit, at the time.

I understand it now. I still have some appearance related goals. But, even as specific as they are, they're too broad to do me any good. As I've adapted my goals to be, well- goal oriented, I've found even greater success. "I will learn the butterfly stroke." "I will complete the 300 workout challenge." I will do accomplish this, and I will accomplish that."

Those goals don't happen overnight. Or rather, if they do, you've set the goals too low. The goals should work towards making you better each time.

Every week, I try to improve. Every workout. One more set. Five more pounds. Ten seconds quicker. When I push myself that way, I find I'm capable of more than I ever thought.

I'm capable of regeneration. And so are you.

Keep transforming. Keep regenerating.

New Beginnings

I maintain another blog, thewritescott.blogspot.com, about my passion for writing. You couldn't tell it by how often I've failed to update the blog recently, but I still write. One of my life goals is to become a successful professional writer, with success defined as "paying the bills through writing."

It's not my only passion. Every time I decided to start another blog post over there, I found myself constructing yet another fitness related metaphor revolving around writing. In fact, I almost wish I'd started with that dual theme in the first place, but that was 60 pounds ago.

Rather than trying to pigeonhole the two ideas, I figured I'd just start another blog. Sure, I'll probably occasionally write about fitness over there, just like writing may come into play over here. But rather than divide the focus, the internet now gets a new blog about healthy living. Just what it needed, right?

In a nutshell, I'm one of those people that knew what to do to be healthy, but I let myself go. Badly. I looked like Doogie Howser ate William Shatner. After a few wake up calls, I changed my lifestyle in a big way. I'll share that story shortly.

Yeah. I'm also a nerd. Well, a geek really. It's kind of implied in the blog's title, and you can bet that Doctor Who will play into my next post.

Since getting into the best shape of my life, I've been ghost blogging health, workout and fitness articles through blogmutt.com. It's been fun.  It's been marginally profitable, to the point that I can officially declare myself a professional writer now. However, it's ghost writing, and I want to be able to tell the world, "Hey! Look at me! I'm the one that wrote this!"

Here goes. *Ahem* Hey! Look at me! I'm the one that wrote this!

Until next time. Keep transforming. Keep regenerating.