Author: matthew

OK, I’m tired of being asked this today, so I’m going to say it once and for all, though I’m not going to link directly because, you know, hyper-sensitive and hyper-vigilant relatives. Yes, the scene in HBO’s latest episode of “Big Love” — very popular on YouTube today — depicting a Mormon temple ceremony is accurate, including costumes, dialog, and set.

That said, temple matrons do not always shoo you out of the Celestial Room in 15 minutes in the Salt Lake-based LDS church; this bit depicts an off-shoot of the Brighamite** church that may have different policies. However, I’ve personally been shooed out if I was with a large group, told not to sit on the floor, told not to lean on the wall, and told to quiet down numerous times 🙂

The scene, despite its accuracy, is not complete. The LDS temple ceremony takes a couple of hours; the Big Love temple scene is around four minutes. There are also two ceremonies which precede the endowment: baptism for the dead and the initiatory. These may have been performed by other patrons if one is attending on behalf of the dead; for convenience, since the clothing required differ so much, most patrons will attend for just one of the types of ceremony.

The discussion regarding a “love court” refers to the LDS practice of excommunication proceedings. This is no longer referred to as a “court of love” in the Salt Lake-based LDS church, but instead as a “disciplinary council”. If I understand correctly, some off-shoots of the church still refer to it as a court of love.

LDS church discipline varies according to the offense, at the discretion of the leadership over the member who has transgressed.

• Informal discipline includes various prohibitions at the discretion of local leadership. This may include a prohibition against public speaking, taking of the sacrament, participating in ordinances, or other personal behavior at the discretion of the penitent and the leader (usually a bishop). First-time offenders, teenagers, and those who have not broken temple covenants usually are dealt with via informal discipline if they are repentant.
• Formal church discipline is reserved for those who have broken temple vows, repeat offenders, the unrepentant (synonymous with “those who do not take their leader’s advice), those who endanger the name of the church, or those who endanger the innocent. Leaders have principally three options via formal discipline: probation, disfellowshipment, or excommunication. Probation may impose arbitrary restrictions on the member. Disfellowshipment may include arbitrary restrictions, but also forbids participation in many LDS activities. Excommunication is a severing of the relationship entirely.

–matthew

** Scholars often group the fragments of LDS churches as Brighamite, Rigdonite, Strangite, and Whitmerite factions. These refer to the various members of the Quorum of the Twelve who, after the death of Joseph Smith, Jr., vied for power. See Succession Crisis. Most members of these factions never refer to themselves by these names, however, instead referring to themselves as the “Saints”. Despite the fertile cross-pollination of traditions and members among many of these factions, most regard the others as apostate groups.

• Brigham Young led the Brighamite faction west to Utah after Joseph’s death; this is the group most commonly associated with polygamy, and also the group most people associate with “the Mormons”. The Brighamite, Salt Lake-based church has splintered into a large number of small factions that cross-pollinate cultures and members with the “main-line”, largest faction. Usually, if the main-line church becomes aware that a member has joined a splinter group, it will excommunicate that member. Today, if I understand correctly Brighamite factions altogether number around 15 million around the world.
• Sidney Rigdon led the Rigdonite group. He was Vice-President of the LDS church at the time of Joseph’s death, and also First Counselor. He had led a large congregation prior to becoming a Mormon, and carried a large number with him after Joseph’s death. However, the groups he led continued to fragment after his death, and no direct Rigdonite tradition appears to exist today AFAIK.
• James J. Strang led an off-shoot colony devoted to living the United Order, and claimed divine right to lead the church. Although small, the Strangite tradition continues today principally in the Community of Christ (though the main-line Strangites repudiate the RLDS/CoC group as “apostate”), and number only a few thousand today.
• Most followers of David Whitmer (Whitmerites) were absorbed into the Church of Christ (Temple Lot), also referred to as “Hedrickites”. Whitmer was excommunicated from the main-line LDS church, and claimed Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet. Today, they number around 6,000.

I just started goofing around on Facebook. I know, I know, Justin, you’ve told me for years that I should use it. Anyway, it’s pretty cool; I’m up to around 200 “friends” on the site now, mostly people I know from school and work. I recently updated my status to show the fat-loss progress I was excited about:

New weight low today: 214.5 lbs. First time under 215 in half a decade. Another five pounds, and I’ll be at my lightest since age 21.

My friend George McEwan asked me,

So are you eating canned air followed by a chaser of water? What are you eating to hit those weight goals?

Facebook, unfortunately, has a limit on status comments that is restrictive. Here’s what I came up with to condense a plan that normally would take pages to describe into a Facebook-friendly length.

I’m on a cyclical ketogenic diet. I modify my plan every 12 weeks, & take 1 week off between plans.

Net 1800cal/day M-F, low-carb high fat. I often have to hit the gym so I can eat dinner 🙂 Protein >1g/lb of lean weight (subtract fat weight from body weight), carbs <30g/day.

3200 cal/day on the weekend, 500g of carbohydrate on Saturday, 250g on Sunday. Protein 1g/lb of lean weight.

Cardio 7 days/week. Started w/15 minutes of moderate walking; now I’m up to 20 minutes of power-walking, and working my way to 45 minutes of jogging or 20 minutes of high-intensity intervals. Depends on the day (lifting day: 20 minutes, non-lifting: 45 minutes).

Weights 4 days/week, heavy as I can, reaching positive failure in 8-12 reps. 6-9 sets per body part, work each part hard only once per week.

Supplementation: Whey protein (50-100g/day), creatine monohydrate (5g/day), men’s multivitamin.

Program from http://www.musclehack.com/ . Great site, get the free e-book. Oh, yeah, and I drink lots of water (>1gal/day).

–Matt B.

Bodybuilding.com’s resident twelve-week transformation specialist, Kris Gethen, has put out a free video series on how to do your own twelve-week transformation with him as your virtual personal trainer, with a video for every single day of your transformation:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/12_week_daily_video_trainer_main.htm

I’m excited to follow along as I undertake my current twelve-week challenge. What kind of body will you have by May 31?

–Matt B.

As I’m sure many of you have noticed, I’ve slowed down a lot on the blog postings. Despite my goal of “a post a day”, I’ve realized that I just don’t have time for all the things I want to do in a given day without sacrificing something.

What is the thing slowing me down lately from what I want to do? Well, as you probably guessed based on the content of my recent blogs, it’s mostly the whole fitness thing. Relentlessly tracking food intake, hitting the gym, and living an active lifestyle takes a lot of time and mental effort. An overwhelming amount at first, but the amount required seems to be tapering off as I grow more comfortable with my new habits.

But in all of this, the quest for balance continues. I want enough time for my family. For my wife. For my blog. For my work. For my hobbies. Can I do it all in one day? One week? How do I achieve balance in so many areas of my life?

The further I get along as an adult, the more I’m starting to realize that, at least temporarily, one must become unbalanced to regain balance in life. As a for-instance, during college we spend an inordinate amount of time on studying and in class so that we can have the fundamental knowledge necessary to survive and do well in our chosen professions. Once in the workplace, the hard work in school simply fades back to quiet mastery of the subject at hand.

The same lesson seems to apply to physical fitness. I’ve simply never been a fit person, nor have I ever established a long-term routine, gained the background knowledge, or even developed enough of an interest in the topic to be effective at keeping myself fit. Now that I’ve realized some of the benefits, I’ve been consuming information like a starving man consumes food after a long fast.

Isn’t that the way it is with so much of life? To achieve true balance, I first must be unbalanced in order to gain mastery over an area of my life. Then once I’ve gained that mastery, the confidence and competence that come with such wisdom allow me to re-establish a new sense of order, with the new-found knowledge taking its place as part of a harmonious lifestyle.

I think I’ll come through it much better for the effort. But to achieve my long-term goals, in the short-term I’ve had to sacrifice some of my favorite pleasures. Thanks for hanging with me through the intermittent silence and myopic focus I’ve had lately.

–Matt B.

One of the revolutions in personal diet management in the 2000s has been online diet-tracking software. Two of the leaders in this personal tracking area are Fitday.com and LiveStrong.com’s The Daily Plate. Both play an important role in improving the health of Internet-connected people everywhere, but have strengths and weaknesses

1. Fitday.com. If you are extremely detail-oriented, you’ll love Fitday. It gives you details on everything you eat, and you can break it down by macro and micro-nutrients. If you purchase Fitday PC, you can track everything without having an Internet connection, and it offers much more detailed reporting. With personal customizable foods, easy data entry, and superb reporting tools, it’s a great combination of ease-of-use with advanced reporting and monitoring tools. Even more advanced reporting and utilities, as well as freedom from advertisements, are available with their Premium membership.

2. Livestrong.com’s The Daily Plate. This has a much, much larger database of foods than fitday.com because users can submit foods for everybody else. This makes it really nice for quick look-ups for on-the-go food tracking. You can even use an iPhone app to look up your food and put it in while eating on the road. Easy-to-use web interface, plugins to both Facebook and Twitter, it’s nice. Through their association with LiveStrong.com, The Daily Plate now has the benefit of large user groups, online forums, and social networking for fitness nuts. Big downsides: unless you buy a Gold membership, you can’t get detailed micro-nutrient tracking like on fitday.com, and eventually they delete your food history (not sure how far back it goes before they delete).

I used Fitday for my last twelve-week challenge; I’m using Livestrong’s Daily Plate this time around. I miss the detailed micro-nutrient tracking, but since I already have a pretty good idea of where my diet put me last time and I’m eating similar stuff (hey, I lost over 20 pounds of fat and put on 6 pounds of muscle, I’ll stick with the plan!) I know what the deficiencies tend to be. Basically I take a twice-daily multivitamin pack and eat plenty of spinach and other potassium-rich foods.

If you’re looking for some way to track everything you eat, both fitday.com and livestrong.com’s Daily Plate are superb resources with active communities of users and support. Heck, why not try both and swap between them based on your current needs? That’s what I’m doing, and both work really well to help me stay honest on my diet and fitness regimen.

–Matt B.

So on my “week off” from training — and with a very relaxed eating regimen — I decided to get my blood tested. This is after 6 months of low-carb and 4.5 months of lifting, with about 50 pounds of fat lost and 10-15 lbs of muscle gained. I was pre-diabetic before starting, and unfortunately diabetes isn’t really reversible… just controllable. I wanted a baseline of health markers before starting my next twelve-week fat-loss challenge.

According to my doctor, eating low-carb and lifting weights — or at least losing fat and lifting weights — is “the right thing to do for someone with a strong family history of Type 2 diabetes who is worried about getting it himself”. She’s Dr. Mardi Trunelli in Riverton, UT. Her husband body-builds, and I look forward to our next visit at the end of the twelve-week challenge I’m starting today.

Height: 6’1″ Weight: 220 lbs Body fat percentage: 18-20% (getting this tested at the “Bod Pod” tomorrow!) Resting heart rate: 72 Blood Pressure: 130/90 Cholesterol: 177 Triglycerides: 93 HDL: 54 LDL: 104-105 (derived figure) TSH: 1.9 Insulin: Normal CBC: Normal CMP: Normal

The good: * I’m pretty normal across the board. In the words of my doctor, “a perfectly healthy thirty-five year-old man”. * HDL above 40. * Triglycerides look really good. * LDL is close to optimal.

The bad: * I’m obviously still over-fat and showing the signs of it. I’m doing much better than when I was obese, but six months of right-eating and lifting won’t erase decades of zero exercise and eating crap. * Blood pressure is a little high. Given my low triglyceride numbers, according to my doctor it’s still very normal and not a significant risk because I’m under 40 years old, but I’d like to lower it to below 120/80. * Despite being “near optimal”, I’d like to get my LDL below 100, preferably below 60.

Prescription: More of the same, doing what I’ve been doing. Shed another twenty pounds of fat through low-carb eating and exercise. I shed 21 lbs of fat last 12-week cycle; can I do it again?

Yeah, I know there are people out there who got astounding results and double-digit fat percentage reductions during their twelve weeks. My eating plan is very sustainable, and from where I sit, I got into this for my health and hoping to avoid an early grave like my relatives. It took me decades to get this fat; it will take a while to come off.

–Matt B.

I admit it… I didn’t vote for the guy. But this quote today about his feelings on where our political party has gone in the past thirteen years or so sums is up perfectly.

“Our moral soapbox was completely taken away from us because of our behavior in the last few years,” he said. “For us to now criticize analogous behavior is hypocrisy. We’ve got to come at it a different way. We’ve got to prove the point. It can’t be as the Chinese would say, ‘fei hua,’ [or] empty words.”

Finally. A fellow Republican who gets it. I’m still a Republican because of the three tiers I consider fundamental to the platform:

1. Fiscal Responsibility
2. Strong military
3. Small government.

I watched my party rally behind George Bush Jr. in ever-increasing spending bills to fund a war that substantially weakened both our military capability through constant deployments and our National Guard through unheard-of mobilization levels. I watched as Homeland Security took over as arguably the most important and visible of all the Cabinet departments.

I’m sick of watching my party go down the tubes. Let’s get back to our roots: reduce government, reduce spending, keep the military strong yet little-used. And let’s stop being hypocrites who embrace those core values only when it’s convenient.

–Matt B. The Republican.

Santa Claus apparently is aware of my current fitness fetish, and graced me with one of the much-ballyhood, infomercial-promoted “Iron Gym” units. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s a chin-up bar that you can hook to a doorframe and take down without any permanent mounting hardware.

Now, if you buy it off the infomercial, they’re going to up-sell you on so much crap and shipping costs that you’re going to spend $70 by the time you’re done. On the other hand, you can hit your local Wal-Mart, CVS, or Walgreen’s and pick one up for under $30. You don’t get the ab straps, you don’t get the extensions, and you don’t get the longer bar, but what do you get?

Yep, a solid chin-up bar for less than $30.

So I’ve been using this for the past couple of months. At first blush, I had to laugh, because the infomercials advertise how you’ll get a “ripped, muscular physique” using the Iron Gym. When you pull out the brochure included with the product, the very first page is five diet tips, and then one tip to tell you to do the exercises included in the brochure to build muscle.

Yep. Basically, I could sell a bronzed Nike tennis shoe and sell it as The Iron Shoe, and successfully claim that you can get a ripped, lean physique by following these five diet tips and holding this shoe up in the air for 10 minutes every day. And I’d be right. It’s the diet that makes your abs show up. All it takes is a low body fat percentage. No device will make them show through 20% body fat.

But I digress.

Anyway, if you are in need of a chin-up bar, the Iron Gym does the trick. I could do two consecutive chin-ups in January, and now I can do six. Then take a break, come back, and do six again. After several sets, eventually I fatigue the muscle enough that I can’t do at least four, and I call it done for the day. My eventual goal is to be able to crank through twenty chin-ups without stopping, and twenty pull-ups without stopping so that I can be that guy who cranks out the chin-ups and is ready for more.

I’ve done some ab work hanging from it, and am tempted by the ab straps to make those easier with less strain on my hands and shoulders. My ab workouts have reached the point that I need to do leg lifts, and doing so from a hanging or dip position gives much more resistance than doing leg lifts on the floor. My only difficulty is preventing my body from swinging, and I bet that the hanging straps — or some DIY solution, since I’m too cheap to lay out the 10 bucks to order them — would help prevent the swings.

Push-ups? Sure, it works fine, and I don’t get the pain I usually get in my left wrist after a set using this instead of flat-on-floor pushups. Extra star since this works as advertised, and if you really want to do hard-core incline chest exercises to rip the pectoralis major muscle, put your feet up on a chair.

Dips? Yeah, the Iron Gym sucks for dips. Get yourself a chair instead, it works better with a much better range of motion.

Sit-ups? My couch does a much better job at holding my feet down.

But for a chin-up bar that you don’t need to permanently mount and that doesn’t damage your house, it does a great job. I store it in the laundry room, hang it from the bathroom door frame for my chin-ups, then remove it when I’m done. It’s convenient, takes little space, gives me a nice upper-body workout when I can’t get to a gym, travels easily, and is worth the $30 for those features alone. I like the multiple grip positions; in particular, the two perpendicular bars seem to really help me chin-up without additional aggravation to my delicate rotator cuff.

The reality is, you could go to the hardware store and pick up some spare pipe and mounting hardware for $5 to install a chin-up bar in your house that will give you equal benefit. The Iron Gym’s real benefits are portability, ease of use, and convenience with a chin-up bar that isn’t an eyesore when it’s not in use. Plus it doesn’t scratch the doorframe; nobody needs to have any idea that I use the bathroom door-frame for home workouts.

I give it four stars out of five. It only loses the one star because the infomercial exaggerates its benefits; you need to diet to get a ripped, lean physique, and some of the exercises they tout on the infomercial simply don’t work as well as they let on. The Iron Gym helps with the upper-body workout, works as advertised for chin-ups, pull-ups, and push-ups, but won’t get you there by itself. And particularly it won’t get you there if you don’t use it.

If you’re in need of a home chin-up bar and will use it, go pick one up today. If it’s going to gather dust in the garage, or if you have space to mount a chin-up bar permanently in your house, give it a pass.

–Matt B.

Received a question regarding eating low-carb from a rugby player over on my my favorite bodybuilding forum; I’m a little out of my element here, since I don’t play rugby, but some general advice seemed in order to answer this guy’s questions.

Let’s talk about muscle metabolism briefly.

Your muscles basically operate in two modes: * Lipolysis * Glycolysys

Lipolysis is the basic process used for fat loss. Your fat cells release fatty acids (or you ingest them and they come through the walls of the small intestine), which are then broken down by the liver into glycerol and fatty acid chains called ketones or ketone bodies. Your cells absorb the ketone bodies for energy. While fat is over twice as calorie-dense as carbohydrates, it’s much tougher to liberate the energy and this metabolic pathway is slow; even absorption of ketones — which are a preferred fuel source for cells — is slow. Gluconeogenesis, another process fueled by the liver, provides glucose derived from proteins. This is one of the keys of why low-carb works: you take advantage of this slower metabolic pathway that requires more chemical reactions, thus you can eat more overall calories and still lose an equal amount of fat. Dietary fat and protein are also highly satiating, which helps the low-carb dieter too.

Glycolysis is the basic process used for carbohydrate metabolism. Your pancreas releases insulin, which binds to insulin receptors on your cells and provides, if you will, a “super highway” of energy to your cells, with the insulin receptor/insulin pairs acting as the traffic cops directing huge amounts of glucose into a cell. The cell can use the energy immediately (well, it takes mitochondria to get the job done, but let’s not complicate this), or store it with other ingredients as glycogen in organs and muscles, or store it as triglycerides if stored in a fat cell.

Whew! OK, brief biology lesson over. Sorry if it was review for you, but I think it’s useful for this discussion.

A lot of people wonder about the relative efficiency of glycolysis vs. lipolysis. The short answer is “we don’t know”. There hasn’t been enough science done to establish exact ratios, and as a matter of fact this “metabolic advantage” is a hotly-debated topic precisely because some research shows that it has a profound effect, and other research suggests such an effect doesn’t exist at all. Human trials are problematic for various reasons. Animal trials, on the other hand, demonstrate that high-fat, low-carbohydrate diets require 10%-35% more calories than calorie-restricted diets for equal fat loss while preserving muscle tissue.

That 10%-35% figure is difficult to nail down; we are not sure of the exact ratios, and once again it’s a contested area in the science right now. But I’m going to run with it for now, because it’s useful.

Back to rugby. If you’re on a strict low-carb regimen, another way of looking the fact of reduced calorie efficiency is that you’re operating at a 10%-35% energy disadvantage compared to your teammates and opponents. Your glycogen reserves will also be largely depleted, and such reserves provide the average person with enough energy for around two hours of strenuous effort. That number’s a bit fuzzy, too… after around 20 minutes of strenuous effort, your body kicks lipolysis into high gear anyway to supplement glycogen metabolism. That’s the heart of the “fat burning zone” stuff people like to discuss with cardio routines, because your body recognizes that glucose metabolism won’t be enough to get you through this strenuous exercise.

So what are your options if you want peak performance as an athlete, but you want to take advantage of the fat-stripping advantages of lipolysis in a low-carb diet? Well, for certain sports like bodybuilding, baseball, football, golf, and others where the focus is on brief, strenuous effort with rest periods between, you need do nothing. Your body will probably keep up just fine relying on protein and fat metabolism. If you keep well-hydrated and ingest some carbohydrate-laden drinks while exercising, you’re golden and your body should be able to keep up just fine.

For any sport in which the goal is just to complete the event rather than to win it (e.g. a marathon or century), you also need do very little. Pace yourself to stay out of the zone at which you deplete your energy stores; your pace will be a little slower, but your body would have been in lipolysis anyway to get you through the event. Keep ingesting carbohydrate-laden drinks during the event; marathon winners usually derive most of the calories they burn during the run while they are running from the drinks they ingest. The “carb-up” the night before such an event can actually hurt the performance of a low-carber during such a long run or cycle, and you’re better off staying with an eating pattern you know your body supports. Do make sure those sports drinks you consume during the run agree with you. Many a low-carber has been laid low during a marathon or half-marathon by explosive diarrhea because they drank an unfamiliar sports drink! Many steer clear of the carbs during marathons and do just fine on their lipolytic metabolism alone. But, of course, they aren’t really competitive; they just get it done at a pace they can sustain without that glucose superhighway working for them.

But what about sports that involve more constant and intense effort, such as basketball, rugby, and soccer(outside of the US: football)? For those, you’re going to have constant periods of running that are depleting your glycogen stores, plus bouts of strenuous effort that require maximum anaerobic effort that deplete your stored glycogen. Realize, I’m not a sports nutritionist and have no formal qualifications in this field (I’m a UNIX system administrator for a living), but I understand the science and think the following are logical conclusions:

1. Additional carbohydrates on the day of the bout preceding the event will almost certainly be useful, and used. No need to pig out on pasta here, just include more carbohydrates than those of us that have sedentary jobs where the only workout we get is in the gym.

2. Since you’ll be practicing daily, hopefully with intense effort, a generally increased level of carbohydrate is warranted day-to-day to ensure you have some glycogen available for the first twenty minutes of practice.

3. Consuming plenty of glucose-laden sports drinks during your match if you are on the field a lot probably won’t hurt your fat-loss efforts at all.

4. Creatine supplementation assists in the ATP cycle and muscular hydration. 5g per day during the season will help both build muscle and keep your energy levels higher during periods of prolonged exertion.

As always, measure, experiment, measure, adjust, repeat. I’d suggest just starting toward the high-end of the MANS program — around 50-60g of carbohydrate per day — and then evaluating your performance as you go along. Sugary sports drinks during your match will keep the insulin floodgates open for glucose metabolism, and may be all you need to keep your energy levels high throughout the contest.

Regards, Matt B.

A number of co-workers and I embarked on a twelve-week weight loss challenge recently. Here are my starting and final stats.

Starting weight: 235.35lbs, 25% body fat Ending weight: 224.75lbs, 18.6% body fat

So I gained 6.4 pounds of muscle and lost 17.03 pounds of fat at the same time. That means my lean muscular weight is now almost 183 pounds.

Whoah. That’s cool. That’s a solid twenty pounds of muscle as of today (February 16, 2009) from when I first started lifting in on October 15, 2008 with 163 lbs of lean weight.

Averaging this out, that means over the course of this program: * I lost one and a half pounds of fat every week. * I gained over half a pound of muscle every week.

I plan on starting over again on March 2, 2009 with a new twelve-week challenge, to see if I can push myself to the sub-10% body fat range at which I could finally see the six-pack that I know is lurking somewhere underneath this body fat.

To get there, I need to take the next couple of weeks and “re-feed” my body. I need to slowly ramp up the calories per day, and while this week I’m going to keep lifting and doing cardio, I’m going to take next week completely off so that my body can reset to get ready for the next challenge. I want to get back to my maintenance level of 3200-3300 calories per day while carefully monitoring body fat to make sure I’m not putting back on any of the hard-won fat losses. Ideally, I’d like to be up around 4000 calories/day to start my next fat-loss challenge so that I have plenty of room to keep reducing as “pool season” approaches, with a metabolism on overdrive and no worries about starving myself.

I’m totally surprised that, as a 35-year-old man, my body was capable of these kinds of muscle gains in such a short time. As a total beginner at the weightlifting game (other than a few months in high school when I was cheerleading and needed shoulder strength), I knew I’d get some quick changes right off the bat, but this is kind of amazing.

Here I am, six months from when I started just by trying to lose some weight on September 1, 2008, the day I finally looked at the scale after already losing some flab and saw it read 251 pounds. It’s been a fun journey so far.

I hate pain, and I always thought fitness involved lots of pain. Turns out that’s not the case if you do it right. It involves a lot of dietary discipline and a willingness to show up to the gym several days a week.

–Matt B.