Breaking Superfly - The Mold is Broken at 20 Pounds Lost!

To my faithful readership,

My meager blogging efforts have been my attempt at putting to word my own philosophy of life.  Sometimes I've done this while coming to terms with this philosophy, but always continuing to grow into what I consider the better me.  My time here in Afghanistan is allowing me to really put a scheme to my philosophy (or the rules I apply to my outlook on life).  As a basic scheme I wrote down 2 categories: Inner-Game and Outer-Game, each with their own sub categories that I will explain in future posts.  An important aspect of my Outer-Game was my goal to get fit while on deployment.  What better chance would I have getting away from my desk at my cozy job back in the States?  Well, I'm pleased to announce that last night I broke the 20 lbs barrier.  I haven't weighed this little in my entire 6 years in the Navy.  Looking back at the past couple months it was actually fairly easy to do and I want to share it with you.

The thing about weight is that you worked hard to get where you are.  If you are overweight, you worked for it.  You made the decision to eat when you weren't hungry, to eat too much, and you positively decided you were absolutely not going to work out.  You made affirmative decisions, and you've made them for years.  You probably tried diets, made the affirmative decision not to follow them and then announced to Facebook and your friends, "that doesn't work for me."  Well, take a step in front of the mirror and look what that hard work has done for you.  Now pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself.  The funny thing is, you worked harder to get that out of shape body than you will to lose it.

Today I'm going to tell you how to change this.  Today, I want you to look in that mirror and tell yourself that you are done working so hard at looking so bad.  Do it!  Say it out loud, "I'M DONE WORKING HARD AT THIS!"  Everytime you failed at an exercise program, everytime you cheated that diet you were proving to yourself that you didn't want it bad enough.  Ask yourself, "how bad do I want this?"  How bad do you want to look better?  How bad do you want to go shop for smaller clothes?  How bad do you want to feel better?  If it's bad enough you will stick to it.  I want you to imagine what you want to look like; maybe how you used to look.  Think about how great it's going to be when you get there.  That's your mantra for the next 90 days.  3 months of your time, that's all I'm asking.  C'mon, you spent years working for that gut, I'm only asking for 90 days.

Diet
My first step was diet.  I did a lot of research on the guys that did the movie 300.  Diet accounted for 80% of their results.  Diet is easy to change if you want to.  You need to cut your carbs.  "Oh no, did he just say Atkins?"  "Atkins doesn't work for me."  You aren't working for you so listen to me, 90 days.  Look fatty, it works.    And I'm going to modify it for you a little bit.  After 90 days you can go back to working hard at being fat if you want, but you won't.  I cut all breads, pastas, rice, and sugars out of my diet up to 20grams a day.  For breakfast I ate a full meal of eggs, bacon, ham, sausage, cheese, Atkins shakes, or my favorite: Isopure Protein.  The wonderful thing about Isopure is it is Low Carb to No Carb.  It actually tastes good (well, the Vanilla and Chocolate do, I haven't tried the rest).  You mix it with a little bit of water and bam, you have a milkshake.  Don't add bananas, or sugar, or anything else to it, you're done working at getting fat.  Here's a link to the cheapest Isopure I found:



Now, you've had breakfast and you get to your desk and you start munching on something else.  Why?  Were you in hunger pains?  Your stomach is the size of your fist so there is no need to try and fit a whole pizza in there.  You need to recognize your mind is playing with you.  Before lunch, if I do feel hunger pains (and you will if you do my plan) I have some pistachios, pork rinds, jerky, or an Atkins brand snack.  All these items are low carb.  Lunch is a salad, lean meat, chicken wings, tuna fish, or cheeses.  I may even have a soup that has no rice or noodles.  Another low carb snack before dinner and dinner looks just like lunch.  I'm generally stuffed for the rest of the night, but if I feel the hunger I might have any of the mentioned snacks or if I'm close to bed time I just go to sleep.

Low carb can be trying.  Your options APPEAR limited, but they really aren't.  You may feel weak for a few days since your blood sugar starts to normalize, but after a few you will feel the same all the time.  You won't be tired after lunch.  This is your body running out of sugar to burn so it turns to fat stores.  People will tell you that you need carbs to run, but look at your gut, you have plenty to run you there.

I supplement with a multivitamin.  I use Opti-Men which suggests 3 a day, but I use two.  One after breakfast and one after lunch.  Here's a link:



After day 3 you should be working on your fat stores.  You will notice the weight start to drop.  After 7 days you may pick a day of the week for carbs.  I picked Fridays.  Friday I eat what I want including ice cream.  After a couple weeks I found it was anti-climactic because I'm not as hungry as I used to be since my stomach is shrinking and the protein keeps me full all day.  You can do just this half of the program and YOU WILL GET SKINNY.  It takes no work at all, you just have to walk away from the food not on the diet and you have to stop eating when you aren't hungry.  No need to work hard at going out to eat and finding different things to shove in your face.  When the temptation gets to be too much just stand in front of your friends, lift up your shirt and do the Truffle-Shuffle.  They will point and laugh at you and you will lose the motivation to have something to eat.

Spartan Warrior Workout



This is how you are going to kick it up another notch.  The Spartan Warrior Workout (SWW) is extremely easy to do.  It has three levels.  The goal of the program is to be able to successfully complete the 300 Workout that the actors in the movie used to test their progress.  It includes a myriad of exercises to get you fit.  Start at level 1.  You go through 7 stations of exercise a day, each concentrating on a different ultimate exercise.  For instance, when I started I couldn't do pull-ups.  Level 1 progresses you through a number of different exercises to get you to the point where you CAN do pull-ups.  Each level is 30 days.  I do 4 workouts a week and use three days to ACTIVELY rest.  Active rest is a day where you don't do the workout but you hoist your big butt onto an elliptical or take a walk just to stretch out the muscles and keep moving.  The workouts have references to another part of the book giving you a step-by-step guide on how to do that specific movement.  30 days on each level.  90 days to get through all three levels.  I spread that longer because I only do 4 of them a week.  You should spend no more than 30 minutes on the workout daily, and probably more like 20.  Every week do the first 2 workouts consecutively.  So if you start on Monday, do one on Monday and one on Tuesday.  This is because it takes you a day to feel the results, so if you take off Tuesday chances are you will hurt too much on Wednesday to do the second workout.  I usually go Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.  I use the elliptical on days in between for an hour because I actually enjoy it.

Supplements
We already discussed the vitamins.  Additionally I use Cellmass:



It tastes good, and it has NO CARBS.  It has creatine to increase muscle size as well as all the additional supplements to heal you a little faster.  You use it on an empty stomach twice a day, one time after a workout.  So if you workout in the morning you take it after and then once at bed time.  If you workout at night you take it when you wake up and once after your workout.  You take it for 3 months, take a month off, then go back on for three months.

Bring it Together

Here's my regular day:

Wake up, have a Cell Mass shot.
Have low carb breakfast. Take an Opti-Men Vitamin.  Go to work.
Low carb snack (if needed).
Low carb lunch.  Take an Opti-Men Vitamin.
Low carb snack.
Low carb dinner.
SPARTAN WARRIOR WORKOUT! HA-ROO!
Cell Mass drink.
Isopure shake (50 grams of protein in a serving!)  I'm stuffed and tired, time for bed.
Wash, rinse, repeat.

This works.  You're going to get excited and tell friends and they will tell you eating is a lifestyle and give you other tips.  That's never worked for you.  Don't be a fool, follow the program.  No excuses, I don't care how hard you want to work at being fat.  Keep your goals in mind and take pictures and measurements.  I weigh myself every 2 weeks so I don't freak out over small changes.  If you're a girl you may use the excuse "I don't want to put on muscle."  Listen, the muscle looks way better than that fat and you aren't going to turn into Ms. Universe.  You may even try, "I worked out so hard now I need to eat this because I'm so hungry."  You're not hungry, you're fat!  And you're trying to work hard at it again.  Don't fill your plate, take a small serving and go about your business.  You can always go back to the table in an hour.  I know the arguments, I made them too.  I weigh myself at night (which is your heaviest) and I have lost 20 pounds!!!  I've only been doing this for 2 months!  Now I'm making smaller goals.  2 more pounds and I will weigh less than I have weighed my entire adult life.  My ultimate goal is 14.5 more pound which will put me at junior-high weight.  I'm only looking at 3 pound goals at a time now.  Let me know how it's working for you!

From a Much Roomier Cave,

Superfly

Back When Child Labor Was Legal

     I promised myself growing up that I would never turn into the kind of person who started long diatribes with "back when I was a kid."  This strict policy I have adopted was the result of many an adult, after hearing me discuss some sort of problem, decide it was in MY best interest to clear up the issue by telling me about a similar situation that was actually not related at all to mine.  Why was it not related?  I grew up in the 80's and 90's.  I didn't walk to school, let alone uphill both ways.  I did in fact own shoes, never took a horse anywhere, and generally did not care that things used to cost a nickel.  If I saw a nickel on the street, it stayed there because nickels didn't work in the arcade.  Whew, so what was I saying?  Ah yes, so...

     Back When I was a Kid we liked capitalism and American flags flapping in the wind.  We said the Pledge of Allegiance and G.I. Joe was still making public service announcements.  And the true path to supreme kid happiness was cold hard cash.  I soon learned the calendar year didn't carry enough holidays for relatives to give me cards which I quickly tore open and shook to find $5 (the equivalent of $1.2bn in 11 year old funds).  I was 11 when I discovered the young entrepreneur, Henry Huggins.

Now Henry, had a paper route.  This seemed to me a brilliant idea.  How difficult could it be to ride around the street putting newspapers in mailboxes while the neighbors threw cash at you?  This was promising.  I told my dad I thought it was time for me to branch out, possibly start my own business and, you know, carry my own weight around the house.  "If it gets your hands out of my wallet," was my dad's way of encouraging my foray into business.  Unfortunately for him and for me the great state of NY has a way of keeping down the 11 year old.  You had to be 12 to get a paper route.  My head hurt as it clunked up against the glass ceiling.  I decided it was time to get a group of friends and Occupy Wall St.  Haha, that's absurd, I decided to find a job.
     Not that long ago I recalled seeing President Reagan with a newspaper full of jobs telling America they were out there.  Boy was he right!  The trick was I had to think bigger than money.  Yes, sir, the new currency was Prizes or Cash!

  True happiness was only a call away.  It took weeks convincing my mom that calling the number would not result in our house foreclosing, our bank accounts being cleared out, or me being kidnapped.  Soon Olympic had a package on my doorstep full of samples of holiday cards and wrapping papers.  I practiced my schtick in the mirror and was out in the street as our neighborhoods youngest, and best looking, door to door salesman.  The trick was to ring the doorbell and when they opened up, stick my Reebok Pumps in the door a little (I made sure they were pumped up first too).  "Hello, my name is Jeff, I live in the white house over there (pointing).  I'm a representative of Olympic and I was wondering if you would be interested in viewing our fabulous selection of Christmas cards?"  I smiled my practice smile.  This lady was a shoe-in!  
     "Let me get my mom," she said.  I thought, "Dang, am I the only 11 year old on the street who makes financial decisions in their home?"  Mom gets to the door, "you're daughter, such a doll.  Say, you look like the kind of lady who likes Christmas.  Don't suppose you also love to get Christmas cards?"  Of course she did.  "I happen to have the finest selection of Christmas cards in my catalog here along with some samples and I would be happy to deliver your selections directly to your home."  She told me she usually waited until the local middle school came around doing the same thing because they were raising money for various charities and was wondering what charity I was doing this for.  Think, boy, think!  My mind screamed for me to say "Ethiopia" but I just blurt out too loudly, "Prizes or Cash!"  She looked at me.  I looked at her.  I handed her the pen and the order form.  I walked away a capitalist.
     Over the next week I made a big haul and I was faced with a difficult decision.  Prize, or cash.  $17 was my cut.  $17 was more money than I knew what to do with.  I sweated for a couple of weeks until the fruits of my labor arrived in the mail.  I cracked open the box from Olympic to find all my hard work looking back at me in the form of a fishing rod and tackle box.  I had never gone fishing but I was going through this, "I better learn how to get my own food from the land," phase.  That fishing set is still in my parent's garage, never used.  However, Olympic taught me a very important lesson: children will sell your products for extremely low wages.

From a Cave,

Superfly

Every Kid Deserves A Nuclear Sub

     You may have noticed on the left side of my blog are links to electronic comic books I recently purchased on Amazon.  Currently, I'm reading the Archie Bronze Age comics (every Archie issue from 1970-1979).  I'm having a great time reading an issue each night before bed, until I reach one page in particular that brings me back to a painful part of my childhood.  The pain that I refer to is that deep soul-affecting pain that parents inflict needlessly on their own pride and joy.  Now, I love my parents but I have let them get off pretty easy all these years by never giving them any grief.  Well, mom and dad, party's over, the gig is up, it's time to get real...this is my story.
     Imagine, a fourth grader on a lazy Sunday afternoon laying on his bedroom floor, daydreaming as he flips through his favorite comic books.  Not a care in the world, at least not until he turned the page to find the most glorious artwork his little eyes had ever encountered.  In a moment, his world was changed as he realizes the power that could soon be at his very hands.  That boy was me, and here's what I saw:

Isn't it glorious?

"There must be some mistake," I thought.  My logic began to spin.  "Why would they offer it to children?"  Clearly, to prepare us for future service, so that's not unreasonable.  "Why offer it to the public, maybe the Russians would try to buy one?"  Impossible, Russians don't read comic books, they're too busy trying to get bread.  Finally, "how could the U.S. Navy possibly be offering one of their nuclear subs from the fleet at such a steep discount?"  I was thinking too much, I had to act.  I immediately prepared my presentation for COMNAVDADLANT.  "Dad, I need this sub."  Like a true democrat he immediately cut all military spending.  Fine, we know who really runs the purse.  "Mom, I need this."  Then I got a speech about how reading comic books was bad for me.  Clearly the Reds had infiltrated.  And so it went, I grew up never owning a Polaris sub.  Mom, Dad...I want to tell these readers you were teaching me a valuable lesson...I WANT to.  But we know the truth, don't we?  You thought this was a gimmick, a waste of money!  And because you believe in your infinite wisdom that you are always right you decided to keep your measly $6 and sentence me to a life of torture and regret over not having my Polaris sub.  Well I'm here to tell you that you actually DID get a sub if you ordered it...I found proof...on the INTERNET, which never lies.  AND HERE IT IS:

Child enjoying life more than I did

     Do you see this boy?  Do you see the pure happiness on his face?  Remember it.  I heard he also grew up to be very rich and successful and let his parents move in with him when they got old.  Too bad I never had a sub.


From a Cave,

Superfly

How Archie Comics on DVD-ROM Saved The Day

Where Superfly learned his game

But before I get to that, let's talk soap. Yes, soap. That little bar you take for granted, but here in Afghanistan is worth its weight in gold (not so much to the locals...yikes!). I'm a shower type of guy, never been much for baths. And on deployment there's nothing I like more than waking up and having a nice hot shower to take that light coat of dust off. As always, there is a heinous (pronounced HI-aa-nuss) individual that steals my soap. Every day I take my shower, open my little plastic soap box, pull out my bar 'o suds and get to lathering down the Polish godliness that is the Superfly. After the shower I often forget the soap. Yesterday was no exception. It was about lunch yesterday when someone was discussing the finer points of the Cardinals beating the Phillies that I fell off my chair yelling, "Noooo!" Eventually I was calmed down enough to explain I left my soap in the shower...again. For the rest of the day I just kept thinking, "so help me, if someone took that soap." Now you're probably thinking, "it's just soap." You don't get it, man! We don't have much here! It's me and the soap. My soap is like Wilson the volleyball to Tom Hanks in Cast Away. My soap has seen more of me than my mom. The soap and I, well, we've been through a lot together. Not to mention it costs $2 for the plastic container and $1 for the bar so I'm averaging a gross loss of $3 per shower. That's roughly the GDP of Afghanistan.

At the end of my shift I caught a flight, parachuted through enemy territory, hired an Indian guide to ford a river, payed a toll, got lost and refused to ask for directions, picked up some MujDonalds, rescued a puppy from a fire, and ran to the shower only to see my soap was not in the stall I showered in. I dropped to my knees and yelled, "why? Why me? Oh, Lord, please not again." Then I let the guy get back to his shower and I went to pick up my mail. Oh look, a package for moi! I LOVE mail.

I tore it open like a fat kid to Oreos and found my ordered Archie Bronze Age Comics collection on DVD-ROM.

Archie Andrews...still the man. Chicks love this guy! Affectionately known as "America's Boyfriend" I have personally been reading Archie since I was a kid. Every Sunday my dad would take me to the local flea market and give me a dollar. I could get 5 used comics (my how the times have changed). Those 5 comics would soon be arranged in neat piles on my bedroom floor by title. I would sit for hours just looking at the colors of the covers and chuckling at how many burgers Jughead could eat. This series brings me right back. And the best part is I'm able to transfer it to my iPad and flip through like I'm reading the comic again. Even better, since these are original scans it has all the old advertisements. I highly recommend this either for your own enjoyment or for the kids (very clean fun). I recently found this and a number of other series produced by GIT. On the left of your screen I have links to my favorites.

I always thought Archie should have gone with Betty. What say you?

From a Cave,

Superfly

And Now Here's Something We Hope You Really Like!

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

-this version is credited to Mother Teresa

In Defense of...Defense