Shedding Holiday Poundage

This is certainly the last subject you'd expect to encounter on what is supposed to be a music blog, but - believe it, or not - I often boast that I can lose weight faster than anyone else on the planet. Unfortunately, I learned how to lose weight fast because I can also gain weight faster than anyone else alive. When I was in grade school, in fact, my nickname was "fatso" for a time (Kids are cruel. LOL!).

I don't recommend that anyone else apply these techniques, and YMMV, of course, but these things I have done before, and they all work fantastically well for me. When I do them together, I can lose over a pound a day easily.

1] Ice Water



I don't know why you don't hear more about this, because for an office worker, there is simply nothing better. Above is a one liter beer mug I got at Fiesta Texas in San Antonio a few years back, and it's perfect for this. The idea is stupid simple: You put a lot of circa 32 degree water into your body, and your body responds by burning a bunch of calories to warm that cold water up to 98.6 degrees. What could be easier than that?

The way I do it is to fill the mug up with ice cubes until they are slightly above the rim - as you see in the photo above - give it a couple of minutes to chill the water (I go and grab my daily vitamin and mineral supplements at this point), and then drink it as fast as possible. You'll be limited to three to five gulps because the back of your throat will get painfully cold. I just stand by the kitchen sink until I've downed the entire mug full.

Then refill the mug, take your vitamins and repeat until you've melted all the ice (I stop when there is only an inch or two of ice left in the mug). Somewhere around the third mug full of water you'll start to feel cold and you'll shiver. Congratulations, your body is now burning calories at a phenomenal rate.

There are other advantages as well. If you are carrying around any significant amount of body fat, and like many people you are borderline dehydrated, your body could be carrying 3 to 5 pounds of excess fluid per hundred pounds of body weight - fluid your body would like to flush out. That's why I start with this: I can lose 5 to 10 pounds in a week doing nothing other than this.

There are disadvantages and even hazards to this as well, of course, the most obvious of which is that you have to have a bathroom handy. This probably wouldn't be a good approach for a cross country driving trip. Then there's the shivering thing, of course, but this also leaches out a lot of vitamins and minerals from your body. I take a LOT of supplements for this reason. With the modern high tech multi-vitamins available today, a One-A-Day or Centrum every time you do this ought to be enough.

I once lost forty pounds in three months doing only this ice water technique. I can stand to do it three times a day if I don't have any errands to run, but I usually do it twice. On days when I have a gig in the evening, only once... er... for obvious reasons.

2] Exercise



That's my old Bowflex Power Pro. I have all of the additional attachments: The Lat Tower, The Leg Extension, the Squat Platform, and the extra 100 pound set of Power Rods (410 pounds total, which I can leg press fairly easily). When I'm trying to burn fat away, I only do fifteen minute sessions on this, but I do them after every time I do the ice water routine, so I'm getting thirty to forty-five minutes of exercise every single day. Later, when I want to add some more serious muscle mass, I'll do some epic two hour workouts only three times a week (I did some of those last October, so I'm still fairly bulked up, actually... for me I mean: I tend toward being really skinny in the muscle department). I love this thing. I've had it for almost ten years now.

The winter weather breaks early here in The Alps of Texas, so by the middle of February, I'll get back into my running routine. Three years ago I had a devastating physical injury that severed a part of one of the nerves in my left leg, so I'm just now recovered from that. Yes, the injury was workout related. As a result, my left foot is permanently numb on the bottom, and the nerves that contract most of the muscles that allow one to stand on the balls of the feet don't work any more. As I predicted, my body has slowly re-learned using other means. Last year I actually did a few seven mile runs with no problem (Very, very slowly, though), so with a bit less avoirdupois to carry around, I ought to finally be good to go this year. I used to run 10K and Marathon distances, and I'd love to be able to get back into that.

3] Diet

I saved diet for last, because it is the least effective way to lose weight. The only diet that ever worked for me was the Atkins diet, but I love carbs and I really, really love beer (Beer is mostly responsible for my current predicament, but sitting on my fat ass all day and playing the guitar is also a major factor). So, I came up with a modified Atkins deal.



These are the ingredients: 18 eggs, two jars of Planters Dry Roasted Almonds, two jars of Planters Dry Roasted Cashews, a larger jar of Planters Dry Roasted Peanuts, a family pack of 70% lean ground beef, and a box of Glad storage bags.

The best nuts would be those still in the shell, but I don't have the time or patience for that. Planters Dry Roasted Nuts I love - they feel like carb-heavy snack food to me, but they aren't particularly carb-heavy - and since I do the ice water routine, I don't need to worry about the salt.

What I do is I hard-boil all of the eggs, mix the nuts together and divide them into seven of the Glad bags, and divide the ground beef into seven Glad bags as well. When you get your ol' bod into a high state of metabolism, you need to feed it regularly, and I mean like clockwork. I have two hard boiled eggs at 7:00 AM, half a bag of nuts at noon, a ground beef steak at 5:00PM (I have a small George Foreman grill that's the perfect size for this), and the other half-bag of nuts at 10:00 PM: Four "meals" per day. I never feel hungry, I have tons of energy, and the pounds fall off like magic. Here's what a week's worth of food looks like:



After motivation, the second thing I need to lose weight is organization. Is that organized, or what?

For the past three years, my prime motivation has been to re-build my guitar chops after a four year layoff. No that I'm in a happy place as a guitarist again, it's time to work on stage presence now. The trigger, naturally, has been the new redhead in my life.



This sexy looking babe will finally allow me to play standing up like a rock guitarist ought to, versus sitting down like a classical player does... for the first time in about twenty years! When I was visiting mom over Christmas, I played it standing in front of an amazing wall she has in her dining room that is a huge wall-to-wall and ceiling-to-floor mirror. I didn't like what I saw. Yes, this guitar makes my ass look fat! LOL!!!

I'm betting I can get back to this by the end of February:



That's Hucbald four years ago. Almost four years ago to the day, in fact, when I first moved from D.C. back to Texas. That would be about 35 pounds ago.

By the end of March, I want to be back to this:



Here we have Hucbald seven years and 45 pounds ago. This is before the leg injury, and I was working on the Bowflex 45 minutes every other day, running four miles every morning, eating and drinking whatever I wanted... and smoking! LOL! I'll try to avoid adding cigarettes back into my routine this time.



Another impossibly beautiful girl. The makeup is again over-produced for my taste, and that's not her natural hair color - er, it would be impolite to ask how I know this - but I'm really digging the eyebrows. I never cared for the radical pluckectomy look.