Some tasty (healthy) treats

I had this for breakfast the other day. It's one cup of oatmeal cooked in water, with some cinnamon, ~20 raisins, ~20 cranberries, and a teaspoon of Silan (or Date syrup). Delicious!

1 cup of oatmeal cooked in water / cinnamon / ~20 raisins /
~20 cranberries / 1 teaspoon of Silan (or Date syrup)

After breakfast, I realized I had a lot of oatmeal left over. So, I decided to make cupcakes! I put the oatmeal in silicone cupcake holders and placed them in the refrigerator. These days it's extremely hot in Israel...so when I feel like a cold, healthy treat, I just pull one oatmeal cupcake from the refrigerator, sprinkle some cinnamon, add a teaspoon of Silan* and that's all there is to it.

* You can play around with the amount of Silan on your cupcake to fit your dietary needs and sweet tooth

Before & After

Every cupcake is about 90gr. If we round it up to 100gr, then according to Fatsecret.com we end up with 63 calories, 1gr of fat, 10.8gr of carbs, and 2.6 gr of protein. A teaspoon is about 5gr, so for the Silan we have 16 calories, 0 gr of fat, 3.8 gr of carbs, and 0.1 gr of protein.

P90X Kenpo X

I'm now in phase II of P90X and wanted to share some post-workout pics I took the other day after completing Kenpo X.

Workout stats:
Average HR: 137
Peak HR: 174
Calories burnt: 648

Catching my breath while trying to towel off

With my new SUUNTO M4 chest strap

Yoga mat dripping wet with sweat

Blood, sweat and tears (minus the blood) sprayed on the TV

Sweat drops on the floor

Raising the bar

I love doing pull-ups. P90X incorporates pull-ups into every resistance workout, like Chest & Back, for example. Pull-ups are also the "Go To" exercise for rock climbers...it's essentially the simplest, most effective exercise you can do.

I've had one of those pull-up bars that you install over a doorway for a while, and I found it extremely uncomfortable. I'm a pretty tall guy (1.88 m / 6'2'') and I'd have to really bend my legs when using this pull-up bar in order for my legs NOT to touch the floor. Being on the tall side, also meant that I'd usually have to watch my head passing through the doorway, cause the pull-up would just barely graze the top of my head.

So, I decided to make my own pull-up bar :-)

SUUNTO M4

Finally! I got myself a new HR monitor. I've had this simple watch with very limited functionality when it comes to getting the proper HR reading. What bothered me most about that watch was that you had to place two fingers on these sensors at the side of the watch whenever you wanted to get a HR reading. I found it very annoying...try keeping two fingers on two very small sensors when you're jumping around P90X Plyometrics, or running, or doing push-ups...impossible. Sometimes, the watch would get stuck calculating my HR and I'd have to try again. So, I decided I had enough, did some research on the internet and found the SUUNTO M-series. I was looking for a watch that had just the right balance between functionality, comfort and style. I didn't want one of those "Techy" watches that when you wear it you look like Robocop. I wanted...well, a watch...something I could wear on a day-2-day basis. I was familiar with SUUNTO from my scuba-diving days...I have one of their (very) old diving computers...but back at the time, it was considered very advance, and I remember enjoying using it on dives.

The SUUNTO M-series has five watches - M1 through M5 - where M1 is the simplest model and M5 is the most advanced. I bought the M4 because it had all the features I needed where the next model up, the M5, had one added feature which being able to connect to other SUUNTO devices like their running POD to track speed, distance, etc. Initially, I thought about getting the M5 as a kind of investment for the future, say, if I decided to get more serious with my running....but in the end, I decided that if that day comes, I'll have a good excuse to buy a better watch :-) Make sense, right?

Well, yesterday I did the P90X Kenpo X workout with my new SUUNTO M4...oh, wow...what a difference! No more trying to get false readings by putting two fingers on the sensors for like 30 seconds!!! As soon as I put on the chest strap, the watch immediately started tracking my HR. I could get an accurate HR reading any time during my workout. The watch even gave me visual and audio cues when I needed to raise or lower my HR in order to stay in the zone.

I call this watch "The Dictator"...when I woke up the first day after I bought and configured it...the first message I saw on the screen was "Exercise Day"...and when I confirmed, the next message was "45 minutes, Very Hard". LOL! If that's not a P90X watch than I don't know what is!

Motivation

Tony Horton, creator of P90X (and a personal hero of mine), posted the following on his Facebook page today:

I've been doing a few interviews lately and the number one question is, "How do you stay motivated?" It seems that when you're not getting paid to stay in shape it's hard for most people to stay on track. Hell, I get paid and it's still a drag most days.

If you're not playing professional sports find a Plan and Purpose that mandates you'll stay committed for the rest of your life. I'll start out by suggesting that you take a piece of paper and write down two lists - just like the one my friend Jeremy Yost made prior to starting P90X. Reasons "Why Not" on the left and reasons "Why" on the right.

My guess is that most of you will discover that the reason why list is compelling and life changing, while the "why not" list will make you feel like an unhealthy loser. Once you've learned (from your lists) that NO is not an option it's time to find ways to stay accountable. When exercise is the last thing you want to do, your methods to stay accountable will help you get it done.

Who in your life can you share this with? If you can go it alone and stay motivated then great, but if you can't find someone else who needs your help and who forces you to show up. I workout with friends every time I exercise. We schedule it, show up, push each other and repeat the next day.

Organization gives you the freedom to live the life you've always wanted, so wake up in the morning knowing the exact time you'll be working out that day. If you can plan lunch you can plan a workout. Motivation is easy when you surround yourself with "like-minded" people, plan ahead and your purpose is to have a better life.

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A few things I wanted to add from my own personal experience...

1. Don't make BIG plans
We all crave change, positive change, the feeling that we're growing as human beings. Therefore, we love making resolutions...and, unfortunately, falling short at the end and getting disappointed. I can't begin to remember the number of times I said to myself "You need to loose a little weight. Starting tomorrow, no more...bla, bla, bla". Big plans and resolutions don't work. They are the wrong kind of motivators. It's better to start small, be modest, hell, be realistic...and expect to fail. But when you haven't set your expectations too high, it's easier to get back on the horse and try again.

2. Make it personal
Look for motivation in intimate, personal places. For me, my motivation was my family, my health and rock climbing. Let's talk about health for a sec. Here are my LDL, HDL and Cholesterol levels over the last eight years or so.

My last blood test was earlier this year and when I got the results and compared them to, say, 2004, I was blown away. In 2010, my doctor told me that he's concerned about my cholesterol and referred me to a nutritionist, who gave me some generals rules, a sample menu and sent me on my way. It was then that I realized that being the sole provider in our family, I had a responsibility to stay healthy. Furthermore, my son, Yotam, was growing up and starting to walk and run...I was afraid I couldn't keep up with him.
As for rock climbing, it's hard to explain...my little brother took me climbing a few times when we first came back to Israel and I was hooked. I joined a climbing gym, bought some equipment and that was it. Pretty early on I realized that climbing is physics at its best...a simple ratio between power and mass, and if I dropped weight and got stronger I'd be able to climb harder routes. These three simple things were all the motivation I needed to get started and, more importantly, stick with it.

3. Don't suffer
Weight loss and exercise are not one-size-fits-all. Every person is unique. Every body is different. What worked for me, might not work for you. The key, though, is to make it your own and not feeling like you have to suffer through it. As I was loosing weight, there wasn't a single moment where I felt hungry or like I was depriving myself from "the good things in life". If I needed a sweet fix, I'd mix some chocolate-flavored whey protein powder with low-fat yogurt and a few raisins. If I needed a snack, I'd go for a light granola bar. Be creative, don't accept things just because they worked for someone else or because that's how you think they should be. Make them your own.

Bring It!

I need a challenge. The trick to keeping yourself motivated when you're trying to loose weight or maintain your results is finding ways to keep it interesting. A nice, hard challenge...something that takes you out of your comfort zone...is just the thing.

So, tomorrow I'm starting my first round of P90X. To be honest, I've tried it before, with little success. Perhaps the circumstances were different but what I distinctly remember was waking up so sore after the first session that I needed a week to recover and by then, well, it was too late. I never went back.

This time around, I'm going to do things a little differently. I'm going to do everything I can to resist the urge of training at my limit and slowly ramp up. I'll take the first couple of weeks to build a good, solid fitness baseline and then slowly start to increase the intensity of the workouts. I'm also going to make sure I get the proper nutrition and rest I need to sustain the 90 days of the program.

My starting point:

• Weight: 78.5 kg (173 lbs)
• Fat: ~14%
• BMI: 22.2

My goal:

• Weight: ~74 kg (163 lbs)
• Fat: ~10%
• BMI: 20-21

Here's a "before" photo I took this morning...

Food Orgasm

In the spring of 2010 I graduated from MIT. By summer, we were back in Israel trying to readjust and rebuild our lives in a place that was always our home but suddenly felt very distant. It was not a good time. I had just started working and was adjusting to the being a full-time employee (as opposed to care-free student), Gila's dad was very ill, Yotam was still a baby and we were living in a 2-by-2 apartment in my mother-in-law's backyard. Like I said, these were difficult times. The "good" news was that all the running around and pressure got to me and I had lost some weight. 5 kilograms (1 lbs) to be exact, so now I weighed around 88 kilograms (194 lbs) with 22% body fat (I know because one weekend while we were visiting my folks I got up on their Omron scale...oh, the horror).

Still, I wasn't trying to loose weight and didn't feel I needed to. I was eating somewhat better now because Israeli everyday food is healthier than its American counterpart plus my new workplace included a catering service (for lunch) which was pretty decent (or so I thought...). There was also a growing awareness in supermarkets to organic, wholesome foods and some places even had an eco-friendly, healthy, green corner where you could get gluten/sugar-free foods, soya/rice/almond milk, organic fruits/vegetables and more. Shopping for these foods was expensive, but necessary because life without Trader Joe's left a huge void in our lives.

So by now, I was eating breakfast and dinner at home, lunch at work so naturally there was no room left for dining out and fast food (or more generally, eating on the go). Before life in the States, I was quite a big fan of Israeli fast food. which is awesome and very different from what you have in the States (of course, you have your McDonald's and Burger King in Israel, but it's the same "empty" food regardless of the locale). Israeli fast food mostly consists of Mediterranean cuisine - hummus, falafel, shawarma, pickled salads and more - which you can get anywhere on the street at a fair price. Of course, quality varies, but the average place usually has a decent offering of fresh, home-cooked food. There nothing quite like eating a huge bowl of fresh hummus with some olive oil, pita bread and a cold beer on the side. It's the kind of dish that you eat after a night of hitting the dance clubs (hummus is great for absorbing alcohol in the blood...lol) or for lunch on Friday which has the effect of making you want to crawl into bed and go to sleep.

Even though I had (unintentionally) given up Israeli fast food (or at least consuming it less frequently), my eating mentality was still very much in (what I'd like to call) "Survival" mode. It's this feeling that you only get three meals a day and at every meal you have to pack in as much as possible because there will be no food until the next meal. Therefore, you must eat more than you can/need in order to sustain your body during this  time between meals. I see this type of mentality all over the place...people packing their plates like there's no tomorrow and leaving half of their food untouched (good scenario) or leaving an empty plate (bad scenario)...either way, the outcome is the same...a feeling of "fullness", sluggishness and fatigue...the kind of feeling you get after having sex...let's call it a "food orgasm" :-) Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? But the thing about food orgasms is that they come with a twist. Every time you experience a food orgasm, the body wants more...and so it moves the point of satisfaction (or climax) a little bit further away...so the next time, your body will need to consume more food in order to experience an orgasm. Pretty soon you'll be so addicted to that feeling of food orgasm that you'll be eating way too much that what your body really (!) needs.

L, XL, XXL

Living (and eating) in the States is a schizophrenic experience. On the one hand, you have the "Excess" culture type of foods where the notion of "best value for your buck" plays the key role. Excess culture food is taking a simple dish like lasagna and putting it through an excessively long and unnecessary production process where it is baked, broiled, fried, tossed, mixed with four kinds of cheese and finally drowned in some mysterious red sauce. Oh, boy. On the other hand, you have the "Whole Foods" culture type of foods where every olive is sold separately, after being picked at some exotic far away land (organically, of course) and costs about the same as a vacation to that exotic far away land. What I'm trying to say is that it was very difficult to find balance, a place somewhere in the middle between all this craziness.

When we first arrived in the States, our sense of proportion was out of sync and needed calibration. This became evident whenever we ordered outside. When asked "What size would you like?", our standard reply was "Large, please". But after a few times of ordering "Large" and realizing we could feed a small country with what was left over, we downsized to "Medium". This move only slightly bettered the outcome until finally we settled on "Small". In some cases, we even opted out of toppings, sides, and extras (usually cheese, which, as we quickly found out, can be added to anything...well, almost anything).

My eating habits in the States were not terrible. We shopped at Trader Joe's and were partial to buying unprocessed, organic foods. I never had much of a sweet tooth, so all the sugary foods were never a problem. We mostly cooked at home and only went out occasionally. I did develop a fetish for beer, lol...buying a DIY kit and brewing my own at home. Beer was also very cheap at Trader Joe's and the selection they offered from micro-breweries around the country was too good to pass.

The irony was that as an MIT graduate student, I had a free (!) membership to the Z center which offered an Olympic pool, a two-floor, fully equipped gym, basketball courts and much more. Sadly, I was too preoccupied with studying that my weekly exercise routine included one (at best) visit to the pool or the gym. When I think back at the resources I had at my disposal to become more healthy and fit...resources I squandered away...I feel like such an idiot. But I guess everyone's smarter in hindsight...

Introduction

Hi there!

My name is Yaniv Corem, I'm 34 years old and work as a research staff member at IBM Research in Haifa, Israel. I'm happily married to Gila, a graduate student at the Technion, and father to Yotam, the brightest, most adorable two year old in the world.

This is me, two year ago, at one of many gas stations on the way to San Francisco during a coast-to-coast roadtrip with my wife. The year was 2010 and I was finishing up my graduate degree at MIT. I spent three (wonderful!) years at MIT during which I've gained some valuable knowledge and experience...but also a few pounds. In this picture, I'm 33 years old and weigh 93 kilograms (205 lbs)..mostly showing in my face and belly. With a height of 188 centimeters (6'1''), my BMI was 26.3. I was overweight.

Fast forward to 2012. Here's what I look like today. I've lost about 18 kilograms (40 lbs), my BMI is 21.2, and I have 13% body fat. I think this picture says it all...

I started this blog so I can share my story of how and why I lost weight in the hope of motivating (and maybe even inspiring) people to do the same...hi, if I did it then anyone can. I'll do my best to share some of the knowledge, tips, and advice that helped me along the way. I want to be absolutely clear - I AM NOT a nutrition expert, personal trainer or expert on weight loss. If you're serious about loosing weight and becoming healthier, I suggest you start doing your homework...maybe even consult a professional. The (right kind of) knowledge you gain, will go a long way!