Every month I take the weight and measurements of my Hulk members. The initial weigh-in is a membership sign-up requirement but it's really up to them if they want to continue to do so. Many join our boxing club for various reasons. While a good percentage of our members are interested in losing weight, we do have some who are looking to gain weight via muscle mass, while others are solely interested in learning how to box or solely weight train. And then there are those who have joined our club merely for the social aspect and environment we've made at Hulk's.
While Snickers really pushes members with their training and is quick to make sure they stay busy training, I've been really trying to focus on their eating. Our juice bar sells protein shakes but we've also started to sell our own 100% in-club made peanut butter and our Egg Ding-Dings. I've been using the Egg Ding-Dings a lot lately as mini competition prizes among members and flat out bribes. One member came today looking rather blah and ready to go home. A simple bribe with a tasty warm treat (an Egg Ding-Ding) if she trained hard was all it took for her to turn her frown upside down.
The success and happiness of our members with our club is really the best advertisement yet and it's really been our only form of advertisement. A walking, living, breathing advertisement is a much more effective one than a simple picture or poster plastered up on some wall. Having said this, the more our members succeed, the more we succeed too so it's surely in our best interest to do all we can to ensure they succeed.
I've translated various personal training clean eating documents that I had initially made for my personal training clients back when I was only doing Flipside Fitness -- pre-Hulk days -- and have called upon various Korean members of ours to sit down with me. Today I sat down with three particular young gals and talked to them about what it means to eat clean. In talking to these three girls, I heard how one was too busy to eat so she only eats once or twice a day, while the others eat three meals. All three of these girls are Korean and all three of them don't eat after training. When I asked them why, they responded by saying "because of diet". They want to lose weight so after training hard and going home hungry, they've come to the conclusion that it's better to not feed their hungry bodies and that the food has become the enemy.
Food is NOT the enemy, how you think about it IS the problem.
The biggest and most common problem I'm finding among my members with regards to their eating is that they're NOT eating. The trend among our Korean members is that they don't eat after exercising and the trend among our non Korean members is that they skip breakfast. I've always been a huge advocate on the importance of breakfast but the two most important meals of the day are really the one you eat when you first wake up (breakfast) and the one you eat after training.
I once told a member, "Do you expect your car to run on no fuel?" She answered by saying "of course no" so I added "the same is true with your body. Food is fuel for your body." I thought my point was quite clear but then she complained, telling me that it was a silly comparison because her body is not a car. "Exactly", I told her, "then why do you treat your body worse than your car?!"
Food is fuel for your body, that is after all the most fundamental reason why we eat it. Somewhere along the line people started believing that food was the enemy to anyone and everyone trying to lose weight and buff up -- that's just nonsense. "But I love McDonald's French fries too much to give it up!" one member told me the other day. "That's fine," I told him, "but we're talking about real food here. Don't mistake overly processed things you eat, something that was once a potato, as being real food." Everything in moderation, that's the key. You don't have to go totally cold turkey with "edible things" you enjoy but you also don't have to get the body you want either. Lean on moderation but know that finding healthy substitutes will help so much and your taste buds will definitely change as your eating changes.
When I was younger, my mother used to only let me drink pop once a week -- Sunday night when it was pizza night at my house. I've always hated cold drinks and fizzy ones too so Saturday night I used to "prepare" my pop by opening it and letting it sit on the counter over night. I loved that one can of Cola a week I used to indulge in. It was what all the "cool kids" at school were drinking and it made me feel rebellious for some reason. I haven't drank pop now for over 10 years. I went cold turkey with it when I was in university and along with it I threw out my interest in any juice. I only drink water, coffee, tea, and I try to keep my milk consumption now to only that which I put in my coffee or steamers. Cutting out my daily excessive milk consumption was the hardest though. My mother used to joke that she'd have to buy a cow for me and she'd always tell me when the milk was low, insisting me to save some for her evening tea. At my peak, I was drinking 1-2 liters a day of milk. Now 1 liter lasts me almost three weeks.
As for how my taste buds have changed, I used to crave ice cream like it was going out of style. I'd slave at the gym for a solid hour only to then eat an ice cream. For me, at the time, it felt worth it but looking back now I see just how silly my thinking was because it wasn't worth it. I don't eat fast food, I hate fried foods and most dishes with noodles, chips and cookies don't particularly interest me nor do sugary sweets. My weekly cravings for caramel popcorn have been kicked to the curb and now the smell of it sometimes makes me feel sick. Now days, my cravings are for bread. I love bread and it doesn't help that the man down the street at a local known bakery always offers me free bread. I thought moving further away from his bakery would take me away from his temptations but it's only meant he's been more persistent with tempting me because now he doesn't see me so often. I saw him just last week, I was out for a run, and as I ran by his shop he was standing outside smoking. He reached out to grab my arm as I passed and insisted I take some bread with him. I ran for about a kilometer with a biscuit in my hand before I tossed it.
Food is fuel for your body and I too am working on making sure I get the best quality and right quantity of it for mine. I'm still very much a work in process but I'm trying -- better than yesterday. It's always interesting when talking to my members about their eating habits and then revealing to them just how much I eat in a day. I usually reveal it to them via showing them my eating diary that I've printed out and have taped to the juice bar wall. Most of them assume that's my food intake for the week when really it's just one day's worth of meals. I eat six times a day, every 2.5-3hrs, and have been doing so for about five years now. Consequently, my energy levels are that of a two year old, the condition of my skin has really improved and signs of aging really have slowed down. The biggest benefit though that I've found with eating clean has been the fact that I very rarely get sick. My nonstop days that are very physically demanding on me mixed with my lack of sleep mean that I'd be more susceptible to getting sick but I'm quite diligent with eating clean and healthy. Eating clean has done wonders for me and I'm really trying hard to get my members to benefit from what has really changed everything for me. I may be 33 but trust me when I say I am in the best health of my life right now and I'm only getting better.
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