Rush Limbaugh, Hand Jobs, and Sir Isaac Newton

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Hillbillies, Facebook, Porn Star Mustaches and the awesomeness that is Baked Ziti Pizza

(Special thanks go out to Victoria Sears Goldman for inspiring part of this posts title)


So I know this guy, let's call him Jed. No, not that ignorant backwoods hillbilly who hit it big and still lived with his mom, his daughter and their inbred nephew. Not that guy from the hills of Tennessee.

Actually his real name (the guy I know and not Buddy Ebsen) is not really Jed but to protect the innocent I have changed his name for our purpose of discussion here.

Now you need to understand that I am really concerned about Jed. He has a bit of belly on him (probably from all the restaurants and deli's he loves to frequent), a bad wheel (from what I don't know, probably sitting too much) and on top of that he doesn't really work too hard when he is at the gym unless he is being pushed, poked and prodded by his buddy who for the ease of the storyline we will call Jethro.

Normally I wouldn't make someone else’s personal health (which is really their personal business) a concern of mine but just like Vinnie, my buddy Jerry and a whole bunch of other people I like to hang out with, Jed is a really good guy.

Anyway, part of Jed's routine, aside from not working out with too much oomph (I guess he is pacing himself), is that Jed loves to talk. That is how I know about all those Deli's and restaurants. But this time Jed wanted to talk about something different and it wasn't black gold or Texas T.

Jed had just seen the movie "The Social Network" (probably over a giant bucket of buttered popcorn, a "medium" sized drink and a box of jujyfruits). His synopsis was it was a great film worth seeing and that while Mark Zuckerberg (the founder of Facebook and the person whom the film is about) was a genius he was also a big jerk too.

Now far be it for me argue about a movie I have never seen let alone to play a leaner, harder, more fit version of Ebert to Ted's overweight and still breathing version of Siskel, but I have bit of an issue with that summation of the film.

I don't know Mark Zuckerberg, not one bit all as I am sure my buddy Jed doesn't either. Maybe he (Zuckerberg and not Jed) really is a socially retarded bag of puss or maybe he is a pretty good guy. I just don't know and I am sure a lot of people out there with some pretty strong opinions on him don't have any real answer either.

I went and researched the film and did not find it to be Mark Zuckerberg "approved" despite the fact it is supposed to depict a pretty decently important chunk of his life.

http://fincherfanatic.blogspot.com/2010/10/mark-zuckerbergs-opinion-on-social.html

What I did find is that it seems a lot of the contributors to the film didn't really like Mr. Zuckerberg very much and that is an important little factoid because it forms the basis of my pontification today.
Mark Zuckerberg had a film made about him whose primary sources came from people who either didn’t know him very well or didn’t really like him. The fact the film was called the Social Network tells me right away that Mark Zuckerberg cannot be all that bad of a dude.

Listen, if you took all my jilted ex -girlfriends (which is basically what disgruntled business partners are) and a bunch of other people who don’t know me that well, and you got them together and had them write a film about me you wouldn’t get something as benign as “The Social Network”. It would be more like “The Giant Douchebag”.

And that is exactly why not only I, but everyone out there should have such an issue with my buddy Jed’s opinion of Mr. Zuckerberg. It never seems to fail that the further we get away from the original source of the information (think really “religious” people who “hate fags” and fly planes into buildings) the more distorted and incorrect the outcomes usually become.
There is no better example of this than with the “cheat day”.

Cheat Day Exposed
To understand the concept of a Cheat Day you need to go back to its origins. Nobody really knows where the idea of the Cheat Day really began. Think of it as the culinary version of the whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa’s body.
What is for sure is that some time ago a bunch of bodybuilders got together and tried to figure a way out a predicament they were in. As they got ready for their show it became harder and harder to maintain not only their sanity (single digit body fat levels and wearing those banana hammock’s will do that to you) but also their metabolisms. You see as your body gets closer and closer to and beyond its natural limits of leanness (please understand this natural limit varies tremendously for everybody just like shoe sizes) a lot of crazy things happen to it chemically.
Not only does your brain begin to center and focus all your attention completely around food making you annoying and irritable but your bodies fat burning systems began to down regulate as does your metabolism. This is all in a last ditch effort to deal with what your body considers a period of famine.
As you can imagine this would be a bad situation for a bodybuilder who is busting their butt day in and day out at the gym. The idea of a cheat meal or cheat day was to bypass this problem and offer a temporary solution until the contest was over. Not only could you periodically “come up for air” as most normal people need to do once in a while when they are on a strict diet but there was also some anecdotal evidence that it was easier to maintain muscle and energy levels. The upside is you could do all that while paying little or no long term price as far as body fat was concerned.
Not a bad deal, huh. It sure beats the hell out of nothing but rice and tilapia for 16 weeks.
But then a problem developed.

Enter the Porn Star Mustache
Very few of you know this, but before “Body for Life” there was another Bill Phillips that was known amongst those in the bodybuilding community. It was the porn star mustache, Zubaz (Dare to be different, and we mean really different like in take the short bus to school different) pants wearing, steroid newsletter publishing guy (Yes you read that last one right. The Hero of the modern fitness movement Mr. I shave my forearms Bill Phillips used to publish a steroid newsletter).
If there was one thing that made Bill Phillips a genius was that he wasn’t one and that he was smart enough to surround himself with people who knew a hell of a lot more about things than he did. Guys like TC Luoma, Charles Poliquin, Charles Staley, Dan Duchaine (R.I.P.), and Scott Connelly might not be household names but they did form the brain trust behind what Bill Phillips turned into a publishing and supplement empire.
Problem was that in the interest of either extreme self-absorption, simple error or an undying need to “know what his targeted audience wanted” Mr. Phillips wouldn’t always get things right. He would move away from the source of the information and instead go with his own interpretation of it.

Bad idea.

When Body for Life came out one of the biggest selling points was not the generic exercise program, the mental strategies, nor the fact that you got to grunt “body for life” after each rep. It was the cheat day in which you got to eat whatever you wanted for one day a week.

Really bad idea.

Why you may ask. Why can’t you have your cake and eat it too? The reason is this. If the average person was to start incorporating a cheat day into their diet over the long term they wouldn’t get leaner, they would get fatter.
Try to remember where the idea of the cheat day even came from. Elite level bodybuilders who worked incredibly hard for years on end and maintained incredibly low levels of body fat. There is a big difference between how one of those people metabolizes say an entire pizza and the average gym goer who is sitting on the leg extension while simultaneously pounding a sugar laden sports drink in an air conditioned room.
My internet friend, Mufasa (yes that is the beauty of the internet where I can be friends with a fictional lion) explains it best when he uses the hot pan analogy. You take the average person and think of their metabolism (roughly a definition of your body’s ability to burn calories) like a pan sitting on the stove top but the problem is the stove top isn’t even turned on. Now say your pour some oil (i.e. fat) into that pan what is going to happen? Barring an invasion of ants that oil is going to sit there an awfully long time.

Now take a high level bodybuilder or athlete and think of that pan sitting on the oven again but instead of the stove top being off it is turned up really high. And when I say really high I mean all the way and it has been that way for hours on end. Your pour the oil in that sucker and it short of a grease fire that oil is going to burn up and turn to smoke right away.

That is basically what happens when you (the average person) eat a cookie versus when a really fit person eats a cookie. One person just stores the calories and becomes more lovably chubby while the other uses it to stoke their body into becoming leaner and meaner.

So what is the solution? The solution is you most likely have no business having the awesomeness that is baked ziti pizza in the near future. If you do then suck it up because you will probably be wearing that thing on your hips for the near future. The key when it comes to cheat meals and cheat days is to understand the context from which they are being used. The odds are you are doing more to enjoy your life by eating that snickers ice cream bar with friends then you are doing anything to benefit your metabolism.

Don’t buy into what hype, your wishes or bestselling books (which are really nothing more than cult phenomenon anyway) tell you. If you want to have “junk food” just understand that for the average person there is no way in hell you are not going to pay a price for it which only reinforces the importance of moderation and portion control.

Or don’t and be fat. What the hell do I know?

Yours in chocolate chip cookies.

Mike Cruickshank

P90X, Pepperonni Bread, and Wet Laundry

Question:

Hey Mike, what do you think about the P90X program.

Answer:

When I was in college I knew this really cool dude named Vinnie. He was a really good football player and even more so, a hell of a nice guy. One year he and a bunch of his friends had a Christmas Party, kind of like the animal house toga party minus the togas.

Before things got out of control, leading to a wrestling match between two linemen that resulted in the decimation of a Christmas tree, this was a pretty classy affair. At least when considering the parties involved.

You know, a real level of sophistication like dudes wearing sweaters and stuff. One of my favorite memories though was the food. Everybody was responsible for bringing something. Me, Dan, and Strano brought a ham.

Vinnie’s mom made this pepperoni bread that later came to be known as the mute button. It was called the mute button because once it hit the table it turned an odd collection of about 20 football players and wrestlers into a bunch of mutes. Yes, the pepperoni bread was that damn good.

What does this got to do with P90X? The people over at Beach Body (the "parents" of P90X) claim that over 20 million people have bought their program. I think I have met about half of them.

Now have I really met 10 million people who have used the P90X program? No, But it feels that way. You see any time you meet a "believer" in anything, having a conversation with them about that thing is like taking a mental kick to the nuts. Many people don't know this but the word believer has its origins from the Latin root word "believerte" which roughly translated means "annoying bastard".

Now those P90X "believerte" are generally nice people but they all seem share the same characteristic, maybe with the exception of one or two people. For the first few weeks before and the first few weeks after they start the program they can't seem to shut up about it. All means of communication are fair game; phone calls, emails, Facebook posts, one on one conversation, and god knows what else. I think if they could figure out how to do those cool flag signals like we were supposed to learn in boy scouts, they would tell you how awesome P90X is via what has to be the most annoying nonverbal communication system ever invented.

"I'm a driver, I'm a winner, things are going to change I can feel it". Yep, this time things are going to be different because I got P90X, Tony Horton and the entire Beach Body community on my side. Incidentally that line in quotations is from the Beck song titled "Loser".

But then, all of a sudden, nothing. Not a peep. It's like one day P90X just doesn't exist anymore. In fact, if it weren't for those commercials that are on seemingly every hour of the day (or at least every hour past midnight) you might be led to believe that Tony Horton and crew packed their bags and left town until the next project came up.

No posts about how hard they are working or how "killer" the workouts are. Just silence. Like somebody hit the mute button. But not just any mute button. It's would be like if somebody kidnapped Vinnie’s mom, took her to a deserted volcanic island in the middle of nowhere and forced her at gun point to make the largest pepperoni roll every made and then they took that pepperoni roll via helicopter and dropped it into the collective guts of every person who talked crap about "doing" P90X thereby rendering them into a carb and fat laced coma. It would be like that kind of mute button.

Now you might ask how this is to be explained. My personal trainer Scott Abel, who is a pretty smart and positive guy, would tell you it is a classic case of the "honeymoon effect" of exercise. This is where somebody is all motivated out of the gate to start a new workout program only to quit when the reality of fitness as a "lifestyle" kicks in. If you have a hard time wrapping your brain around that concept think about the difference between the bliss of falling in love and getting engaged versus the reality of being married to the same person every day for years on end and all the work and sacrifice it takes to make something like that work. Think about the sacrifice and budgeting it takes to retire with dignity versus the romantic concept of "hitting it big". Or the cute concept of having a puppy versus the reality of vet bills, cleaning up poop both inside and outside the house, training and taking the responsibility of taking care of another living being for at least the next decade (I guess the same can be said for having children too).

When it comes to P90X and all of the other infomercial programs that came before it the issue has never been whether the programs work or not. If you do anything with enough intensity, for a long enough period of time without killing yourself and you combine that with the right diet (no Tony it isn't just all about the workout) than any program technically "works". But that is just it, you actually have to do the program and you have to do it for the rest of your life because unlike carving a statue out of marble which will stand the test of time, the second you stop working on your beach body creation it will all turn to crap.

In closing, I would ask you to rethink the P90X thing like this. "Do I have more of a need for free space or for dry laundry?”

The advantage of the P90X program isn't muscle confusion or some other hype. Once you get past the dumbbells, the bands, the mat and the other "optional" supplements that they recommend you buy, all P90X is are a bunch of DVD's and a couple manuals. The cool thing about that is when you eventually quit and stop doing it the program won't take up much space. You can put it right on your bookshelf next to Gunnar Petersons Abs Secrets, Abs of Steel, Buns of Steel, The Firm Volumes 2 thru 50 (the firm volume 1 with Janet Jones Gretzky is fantastic cinema and is purposely left off this list), 6 minute absm tae bo (late edit/I forgot about this one, thanks Linda Cherry!) and any of that crap that Jillian Michaels is shilling out these days.

The disadvantage of P90X is that you can't hang wet laundry off it like you could with the solo flex, bow flex, body by Jake take your pick of the body part of yours that makes you hate yourself machine, and the tower 3000.

So, if you have a need for more space then go P90X. If you have a need to dry laundry then go with one of the other fantastic options listed above.

But then again, what the hell to I know. I say fiddlesticks with both of them. I'm going to stick with Vinnie’s mom's pepperoni bread.

Yours in Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Mike Cruickshank

Tom Cruise, The Pope, and Beef Jerky: What I Ate 2/1

What I Ate 2/1

Meal 1: 2 scoops chocolate protein powder mixed with ice and water
2 slices Trader Joe’s extra fiber wheat bread with a little Smuckers jelly
1 ultimate man multivitamin (we have already touched on whether or not this actually makes me the ultimate man. I say no. Tom Cruise probably wants that title but for that very reason we should not give it to him)

Meal 2: (This one is messed up) ½ package of turkey ted beef jerky or some stupid name like that. I actually cannot remember. My girlfriend picked it up at Trader Joes when she was getting our bi weekly order of salsa, beef jerky and pretzel bites. She thought it looked interesting and it was. They were these Jerky like sticks that looked kind of like that hot dog that you left on the grill for too long cause you got really drunk at your buddy Jerry’s BBQ in Pennington and then later you got the buzz munches and saw it on the grill all burnt and crispy looking and you ate it anyway.
So on that note you know it tasted really good, way better than regular old beef jerky and for that reason I started to get suspicious because if there is one thing I have learned in this world is that there is no such thing as a free lunch (just so you know I did not actually discover there is no such thing as a free lunch. I think Christopher Columbus discovered that and even he figured it out a couple hundred years after the Vikings). This along with the fact that the label just wouldn’t shut up about how it had no nitrates in it and how “low fat” it was compared to regular beef jerky had all combined to make me wonder if there was some Trader Joe’s “I’m organic and so I am better than you as a person” kind of tomfoolery going afoot (what the hell does tomfoolery mean anyway?).
It turns out that compared to regular beef jerky this stuff is loaded with way more calories, less protein and way more fat. That’s a triple looser in my book but it does go a long way to explaining all those really overweight and unhealthy people I always seem to see in that store and Whole Paycheck (i.e. whole foods) who think they are doing the right thing by shopping organic and paying twice as much for everything. There is an important lesson in this all though. Even if something is organic, if it is loaded with too much fat or too much sugar or too many more calories than you need to consume in the day the only thing you are going to wind up with is an organically fat butt.
Oh Yeah, I had an apple and 2 oz. of raisins with this meal.
Meal 3:
1 serving of meat over pasta (beef, yellow squash, spinach, onion, tomatoe (Dan Quayle says take that red line and suck it spell check) sauce (about 350 grams total weight) with 200 grams of Barilla Penne Pasta.
Meal 4:
7 oz. Albacore tuna
1 baked potato
1 cup mixed vegetables with ½ tablespoon olive oil and sea salt

Meal 5:
More leftover meat over pasta but I had only 300 grams total meat and veggie mix along with the same amount of pasta. I only had less meat and veggies because that was all that was left in the Tupperware. I did not do it because of some dumb outdated idea like eat less at night or my favorite “Eat like a king at breakfast, a prince at lunch, and a pauper at dinner”. What the hell is this anyway, the middle ages?
I hope not because that would mean that the Pope would be running the show and that would mean trouble for me being a lapsed Catholic with a Jewish girlfriend. I think they used to put your eyes out for stuff like that. At the very least they would take me by the scrotum and start playing ping pong with my balls. Oy the agony, Oy the shame to make my privates public for a game (o.k. I stole that last part from Mason in the History of the World. Damn good song though)

Grease, Homosexuality, and Roast Pork Sandwiches

Hey Gang,

So the other day I get this message on Facebook. I got defriended by somebody. Getting defriended on Facebook is almost as low as it gets. In fact the only thing lower short of being forced to eat out of dumpster or being friends with Jerry Novack, The Red Headed Boogie Child, and Me (that is an inside joke dedicated specifically to my friend Jerry Novack, you are not meant to understand it), is getting defriended on Facebook and getting a message attached letting you know about it. It hurts kind of like jumping onto a bicycle with the seat missing (Naked Gun).
But so I digress. You see, there is this trainer from the great state of Ohio who wanted to let me know how embarrassed he was that we share the same profession and that because of this he could no longer be my Facebook Friend.

Yeah, Really.

But wait, the Psycho stew gets thicker and with more ingredients added.
This trainer, let's call him Uptight Larry, read this blog and determined that after my vacation email and my roast pork sandwich post, that I was worse than a bad trainer. This threw me into a state of confusion since I am not sure how that state of being is possible. I one time saw a one legged man in an ass kicking contest and he had more pride than a bad personal trainer, let alone somebody who is worse than a bad personal trainer.

Uptight Larry informed me that it is bad enough that people eat foods like that but what is even worse is when a member of the fitness profession encourages eating such foods. If not even by suggestion, Larry said, but by a tacit approval through consuming those foods by oneself you are setting a bad example for the general public and that cannot be tolerated.

Uptight Larry informed me that not only does he not “LET” his clients eat those foods, he doesn’t even “LET” them microwave their foods either since it according to him “Leaches and Kills important nutrients from the diet guaranteeing that you will have a weight problem and be set for a life riddled with poor health and disease”.
No crap.
Now I think Larry has a problem and it just starts with his need to “Not Let” people do stuff.
You see, I feel bad for Uptight Larry; I really do, because down deep I feel he has the potential to be one of the finest people I have never met. In fact, before Uptight Larry, I am not sure if I ever met somebody worthy enough that I could have devoted an entire blog post too. So in honor of the greatness that is Uptight Larry and all those other health nut put your nose up at sugar, fat and alcohol wannabe benevolent dictators I want to give one bit of free advice.
You need to watch the movie Grease

Homosexuality

No, this isn’t going to be some crude “Get Travolta out of the closet” reference. In fact I think we need to leave Travolta alone and give the man some respect. I know he is all bloated and crazy and stuff but at one time that guy could really dance. That should mean something.
Anyway, about eleven years ago I was training this guy, let’s call him Mike. Mike was and still is by all accounts a homosexual. Since I was young and stupid and didn’t know many openly homosexual people at that point I asked Mike a very thoughtful if not stupid question. Given the fact that I wanted to understand Mike better I asked him when was the first time he realized he was gay. Taken aback by this Mike retorted “When was the first time you knew that you were straight!”
That was a big mistake on his part because when you have a dude whose brain is as twisted as mine is you are going to get an answer to that question. I do remember the moment when I knew I was straight.
It happened when my family got its first VCR in the early 80’s. I remember that VCR because it weighed like 100lbs and was thick enough to stop a 50 caliber round. It had one of those pop top ejector cassette tops, a real survivor of the earlier VHS versus BETA wars.
Either way, one day I was watching the movie Grease and I couldn’t have been more than 6 or 7 years old. Now before we go any further don’t get pissed at my parents over letting a little kid watch Grease. Ninety Nine percent of that damn movie went completely over my head. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized how messed up and heavy some of the subject matter was. In fact I remember wondering why Rizzo was at the drive in movie when it was well known around town that she had a bun in the oven. I couldn’t figure out how she expected to get home in time before her bun got burned and ruined. I remember thinking that when I get old enough and have my own oven I was going to make buns every day. Pillsbury cinnamon buns at that because as a child my mom only let me have them but once a month.

But where were we? Oh yeah, so Grease is on the whole time and I am completely bored by Sandra Dee (Olivia Newton John) until that scene at the end where she comes out and she is that naughty little whore and I said to my six year old self “I like that”.
I had no idea why but there was something about her in those friggin pants. It drove me nuts. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I grew up in Central Jersey, I just don't know.

Upon telling my client Mike this he admitted that Grease was a turning point for him too as a child. Not because he wanted a hickie from Kinickie (it’s like a hallmark card) but that when he saw Olivia Newton John in those pants he didn’t want to get in them, he wanted to wear them.
Now to make already long story longer my point is this. From a very young age we are who were are and sometimes we have no control over that. My client Mike is Gay, I like hot chicks in tight black pants and I like roast pork Italian sandwiches. In fact, for the most part I like food. A lot. And nothing I try to do is going to change that. Now I could go Psycho like our buddy Uptight Larry and start dropping people off of Facebook and telling them what to eat and all but where would that get me. It would be like getting my client Mike a subscription to Playboy. It’s not going to change anything and if you read the works of guys like Carl Jung it might lead you to believe it would probably make things worse.

According to Jung we all have a shadow, a dark side (Mr. Jung should know given the fact he had a lady on the side for many years and she wasn't his wife) and the more we try to bury that shadow it the bigger and hairier it becomes. Kind off like a morally reprehensible Chia Pet that somebody just keeps on watering.

I like food a little bit much, so you could say that my love of food, well above and beyond it's need to nuture my body, is part of my shadow. But instead of trying to repress it, I will embrace it because it is part of my experience of life. That roast pork sandwich that I eat at every Flyers game is part of the life experience of the flyers game just like turkey is to thanksgiving or chocolate bunnies are to Easter or brisket is to Passover etc. etc.
Without that sandwich, which I must say god bless it and the city of Philadelphia from which is resides, the game experience would just not be the same.
Now granted I do it with half a brain in mind. I have my “cheat meals” but they are a some of the time thing, not an all of the time thing. In fact, before I even ever had a cheat meal I got lean enough that my body had the muscle and metabolism to handle it.
But to say that enjoying good food is wrong, that is just stupid. Throwing a bag of kittens is into a river is wrong. Robbing a bank is wrong. Those are moral decisions. Eating a cheeseburger with fries doesn’t even come close.
Take it from me, you have to come up for air every now and then or else you might wind up like Uptight Larry. Any time you try to bury your shadows bad things will happen. The way I look at it you have a choice. You can either identify and embrace who you are and find positive ways to work around the not so pretty parts or you can wind up like one of those repressed anti-homosexual and anti sex preachers who gets caught banging dudes in a bathroom at the airport or found with a dead hooker in your trunk.
Then again, it might also make you eligible to run for office. What the hell do I know.
Till next time, yours in chocolate chip cookies.
Mike Cruickshank

What I Ate 1/20

Meal 1:
Protein Shake = 2 scoops chocolate protein powder/Beverly Ultimate Muscle Protein mixed with ice and water
(I have been asked why I use this stuff as in "what does it do for me" of which the answer is "very little". All Protein powder does is offer you a convenient alternative to real food. It is in no way better nor does it have anything superior in it that will make you get any stronger or leaner any faster than if you were able to eat real food like chicken, steak, eggs etc. In fact I find real food works much better espcially when it comes to digestability as in you don't fart as much when you eat real food. Anybody who tells you different is probably looking for an angle more than they are telling you the truth. Either that or they don't care what you smell like nor do they have to wash your underwear on a regular basis but so I digress. Remember, there is no shortcut, their is no special secret, only the reality that there will always be somebody out there trying to make a profit from peoples desperate attempt to find a easier way to do things.)

Two slices of wheat toast with a little smuckers jelly

1 Vitamin Shoppe (there's that damn "E" again!) Ultimate Man Vitamin
(I have also been asked why I use this vitamin and does it really make me an ultimate man. Well let's just say that if Ponce De Leon searched for the fountain of youth, I am currently searching for the fountain of a little better than mediocrity so no, it doesn not make me an ultimate man. I only chose this vitamin because the vitamin shoppe is right across from the parking lot from home depot and this particular supplement is usually on sale and unlike most multivitamins it doesn't put me on the toilet as a result of nutrient overkill. So maybe in a roundabout kinda way it does make me a little more "ultimate" than the broke dude who when he is not stuck in the bathroom drives around new jersey all day buying vitamins.)

Meal 2:
200 grams marinated round steak (I chose to put steak in this meal because I used my shake for breakfast. I did this because I have been farty lately, and when I say farty I mean imagine if you had a broccolli and cheese omlette and washed it down with a pint of old school Bud. I think it is from all the eggs I have been eating every day. I have cut back to eggs 3 days a week and there has been a definite change in my natural gas output so much so that British Petroleum has cancelled their attempts to buy my butt)
1 apple
2 oz raisins (I chose these fruits because they are what I had in the house. There is no deeper meaning behind them).

Meal 3:
1 can of tuna (7 oz. of albacore because it is cheap and convenient and I am cheap and lazy)
1 baked potato
1 cup mixed vegetables (aspargus, broccoli, corn/once again their is no secret to this combination outside of the fact that it was what was on sale at BJ's Warehouse in Hamilton N.J.)

Meal 4:
180 grams round steak
4 quaker cheddar rice cakes (this meal is easy, quick, convenient, I already had the meat made and just pulled the rice cakes out of the pantry. I didn't have time to make a big meal because I was going out that night and this fit the bill perfectly. Meal = 1 carb and 1 protein with the occasional vegetable thrown in)

Meal 5 (eaten at the wells fargo arena at the flyers game)
1 Roast Pork "Italian" sandwhich comprised of roast pork, sharp provolone, broccolli rabe and stuffed with potato chips. Any of the pork, provolone, or brocolli that fell out of the oversized sandwhich was scooped up with the remaining chips at the bottom of the box the sandwhich came in. It's kind like pork nachos and it is awesome.
(Now before you diet nutjobs get your underwear in a bunch about a personal trainer eating such "bad" food let me jump the gun by telling you to go to hell right now. As will be stated in my next update, there is a deep, well thought out reason I eat this kind of food but the bottom line is that if you don't ever "come up for air" I don't really see the point in eating "healthy" all the time unless you have some kind of psychological illness which compulses you to eat "healthy" all the time. Either that or you are under the direct care of a physician who for whatever reason warns against it.

1 Large DIET COKE (Of course one would wash such an impressive meal down with DIET coke. I mean what else would one drink. That regular soda will kill ya don't ya know.)


Yours in Chocolate Chip Cookies,

Mike Cruickshank

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