Elvis, the toilet, Jon Bon Jovi and Me.

Question of the Week:
Mike, I read an article that said I should weigh 130lbs. It talked about this thing called the Body Mass Index (BMI). What gives? I am a little nervous because right now I weigh 150lbs. If I don’t lose 20lbs am I going to die young, fat, and on the toilet like the King.
Signed,
Frustrated in Central Jersey

Dear Frustrated,
It is not yet noon as I type this and it is way too early for a dead Elvis on the pooper reference. But, relative to Wyatt’s brother Chet from Weird Science, I am a pretty nice guy. So nice that I will give you some free advice and not demand the $180 in crisp, clean, new bills that Chet charged Wyatt to not tell his parents that he was wearing women’s underwear (If you are not a child of the 80’s please feel free to skip that last reference).
Your problem is not your weight, the body mass index or some other obscure mathematical chart contrived by an actuary who is so introverted he is too shy to have a conversation with a house plant.
No, you just never had a Jon Bon Jovi moment like I did the other day. Let me explain.

Me and Jon Bon

The other morning I woke up at 5:00 (that is in the a.m. This is not the Jersey Shore on MTV) to train some guy in his basement. Who the guy was is not important, and no, it wasn’t Jon Bon Jovi. What is important is that was cold and dark as hell outside. It was one of the coldest and darkest days of the winter. Being half in a stupor before even a rooster would be dumb enough to wake up I had to be up on my feet, with my teeth brushed and my brain mentally ready to yell at somebody to do pushups for the next hour.
At some time during this ordeal I thought to myself that twenty one years ago when I first walked into the weight room at Woodbridge High School I should not have picked up a dumbbell. No, what I should have done is turned my skinny pale butt around, walked right out the door and picked up a guitar instead. Hell, it’s worked out pretty well for Jon Bon Jovi and he is from Sayreville. Please note this is not a knock on the fine people of Sayreville. It is just a point of common reference because if you didn’t know Sayreville basically shares the same gene pool as Woodbridge, Edison and the rest of Central Jersey for that matter. My point is, from a basic sociological standpoint, Jon Bon Jovi is no better or worse than I am.

And then the mental drama began. Whine, whine, whine because I am sure Jon Bon doesn’t have to get up at 5 a.m. and yell at people and he gets to live in big house, with really high hair, and have lots of groupies.
But then the cold sting of reality hit me in the face. It was either that or the damn wind chill that was hovering around -10 degrees.
I can’t even play a harmonica, let alone awesome music on a guitar. And I can’t sing. When I do so in the shower the bar of soap gives me more crap about it than when I lather up my under carriage (Yes, my voice is that bad). And composing music, hell I can barely get this blog done every week, let alone write songs that sold something like 50 million albums over the last 25 years.
Any you know what? So what! I like yelling at people and lifting weights. It’s what I am good at. It’s my gift.
The bottom line is I shouldn’t have picked up a guitar or done anything different than what I did because those dreams, as grandiose and blissful as they are in the world of fantasy, are not who I am.
I am not a rock star, or an Olympic downhill gold medal skier, or fast enough to play in the NFL and make millions. Five foot nine and 170lbs (which is what I should weigh according to the BMI Chart) is not who I am either (I weigh a little around 205lbs which makes me obese according to “them”). My predominant ancestry comes from a land of stocky people with big knees who like to eat lots of brown and white food. Think about that for a second. Big knees and Brown and white food doesn’t necessarily set the stage for being slight of build.
The same goes for your weight because when it comes to what you should weigh, that’s (to quote Miss Mona Lisa Vito) a f****** trick question.
If you want to lose weight, gain weight, or whatever your fitness goal is, the act of shoulding all over yourself, especially when it comes from the basis of unrealistic standards and not positive actions, is going to make you wind up in the same place as if you messed with Edwin Rooney which is a one way ticket to nowhere (Ferris Bueller)!
Instead of worrying about what you should weigh, you need to start thinking about what you should be doing. When I first hired my personal trainer, a guy named Scott Abel, he never asked me what I thought I should weigh because Scott Abel is way too experienced for that. He simply asked me what my goal was (to lose some body fat) and then set up a diet and exercise program to help me accomplish what I set out to do. What I weighed was irrelevant to the process at hand. So instead of saying “I should be 170lbs” which wouldn’t work because it is both physiologically as well as socially impossible for me (never underestimate the latter portion but more about that later) I instead focused on the following:
My first meal should have 3 eggs and two slices of toast with a little jelly on it. Now what should I do? I should get my butt into the kitchen to make sure I have 3 eggs, toast, jelly and the knowledge and equipment to make that happen (in this case it was nothing major, just some boiling water for the eggs and a toaster).
And what about my next meal (since there are five of them prescribed in my eating plan)? My next meal should have a protein shake and two or three pieces of fruit. Well, if I should have three pieces of fruit a day it would logically fit that I need 21 pieces of fruit in my house to make it to the end of the week, wouldn’t it? Do I have 21 pieces of fruit in my house? If the answer is no then I need to get my butt to shop rite and buy 21 pieces of fruit and not just any pieces of fruit but pieces of fruit that I actually like. If I didn’t know what fruits I like then what I should do is get a bunch of different fruit and figure that out. Do I own any protein powder? Yes I do but I stopped drinking it because it tasted terrible. What should I do? Find some freaking protein powder that I actually like and get a lot of it in my house.
Please note that so far none of what I should be doing involves a scale and weighing myself.
Meals number three through five are all pretty much the same. Some type of protein (beef, chicken, or fish), some type of carbohydrate (pasta, rice, potato) and some type of vegetable (take your pick). The only catch is that because of my goal (fat loss) and my personal issue of portion sizes (those always trick me up in that I always overestimate the protein and underestimate the carbohydrate servings). I have specific amounts of how much of those foods I should be eating.
Do I own a food scale? No? Well then I need to go visit my buddy Kelly over at ACE Housewares in the Princeton Shopping Center and get myself a food scale. Do you need a food scale? How the hell am I supposed to know? Do you have the same problems with portions that I do? If you do then maybe you should go visit Kelly too.
Now that I have my cool OXO food scale, what should I do? Find out if I have the proteins or carbs in my house. Now once I have those protein and carbs what I should do is ask myself if I have a way to prepare these foods in a matter that doesn’t blow the calories out the door and still allows me to enjoy them? If not then what I should be doing is asking around, going on the web, or going to the book store and finding some resource that tells me just how to do that (You can also check here periodically for ideas like the meat over pasta meal or my steak marinade).
Do you get my point yet? I hope so because I am sick of typing and this chair is hurting my back.
In closing, I don’t think you have to stop using the word should as much as you need to apply it in the right context. Focus more on actions versus standards and outcomes or as the shrinks would say “Become Process Oriented”. If you do then you will never have to worry about a trip to the land of sequin jumpsuits, barbiturates, and endless fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

Thanks,
Mike Cruickshank