hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2361.txt

Episode: 2361
Title: HPR2361: Information Underground: Working Out
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2361/hpr2361.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 01:44:40

---

This is HPR episode 2,361 entitled Information Underground, working out.
It is hosted by Klaatu and is about 41 minutes long and carries a clean flag.
The summer is deep, weak, lost in broncs and Klaatu talk about exercise.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hello everybody, welcome to Information Underground on Hacker Public Radio.
I have today with me, Lawson Bronx.
Hello everyone.
And I have Klaatu.
Hi everyone.
So today I want to talk about something that happened to me a few years ago.
Three years ago actually, after going through a bit of a midlife crisis being an old man
that I am, dealt with it by taking up weightlifting.
My wife told me that that was much better than young girls in sports cars.
And it was an interesting thing because I hit that midlife crisis age and I began feeling
really old and I logically figured out that I should get into working out and I ran
out and I bought dumbbells and I began doing all this weight lifting stuff three times
a week and everything still works.
I kept getting stronger and stronger and bigger and bigger.
I didn't get slim though.
The fat is stubborn and six around but I got a capsule during a V-taper but more importantly
as I felt the heck a lot better about myself.
You know I have to say that maybe it's an age thing because when you told me you were starting
to get into this I had just started working out myself not with weights but I started
exercising and I'm 54 years old now and I you know it just at some point I look and
I see you know I'm not getting any better and I'm putting on weight when I never used
to.
My lifestyle isn't any different but now I'm putting on weight and I started using,
we have a stationary bike, I started using that and later I started doing sit-ups and
push-ups.
However, in the last, oh I guess four or five months I had to lay off, I have a shoulder
injury, an old one and it started flaring up.
If I'm going to be perfectly frank, I used it as an excuse to stop all together so it's
still something on my mind and I got to get back to it but I lost 35 pounds from the time
I started.
My weight dropped initially then went back to where it was but my body composition was
completely different.
My eldest niece says I'm the best looking old guy she ever met which is a fantastically
flattering thing for me to hear.
But you know it's as far as the weight is concerned, a lot of this has to do with the
natural ebb and flow of testosterone over life.
This is definitely a bit of a young man's game but we still reap fantastic health benefits
from it.
Statistically people who continue weight resistance training have lower chances of cancer, lower
chances of heart disease, lower chances of type 2 diabetes, doesn't hurt to be the best
looking guy in your age group amongst your friends either.
A great shot for the ego.
I have to say that I'm not entirely certain that the exercise was very responsible for my
weight loss.
I believe it was mostly diet.
I did change my diet.
I started eating fewer carbs and a lot more protein.
Now I was pretty militant about it for a while and I did see a lot of loss.
It did plateau.
It did plateau out.
I got to about 170, like between 175 and 179 and I just couldn't drop anymore and I figured
well I probably need to do more cardio exercises and that's when I hurt myself.
I have not been, unlike you, I have not been working with weights and I have not seen much
in the way of muscle gain.
So I look better because I lost fat but I don't look better because I have better
muscular, you know, a better musculature.
I have to say that the benefits were amazing.
You do feel it.
As soon as I started losing the weight, I started feeling so much better and it's so much
nicer to like bend over and not not only because the gut's in the way and it causes problems
just to feel better, like even just bending over to pick something up used to knock me
out.
I get all, you know, I'd start breathing heavy.
My heart would be pounding just that effort alone and, you know, hitting the bike every
day and I started very, very, very low.
Just I started with just a couple minutes a day.
The health benefits are, well I won't say a medium but you begin to see it really pretty
quickly.
You start seeing it pretty quickly.
You know, I like it.
I like it with the way you talk about being able to do more because I happen to have
a very physical job.
I'm a butcher and all of me comes into the shop in 60 to 80 pound boxes and so I begin
doing all this, this, this barbell, this dumbbell guy stuff.
And inside of three months, I became the truck breakdown guy and I was, I'm like, taking
up 60 pound boxes, it feels like a feather, I just throw them, throw them into the right
place.
See, that's amazing to me.
I could never do that.
Please don't know.
You wanted to know what else is funny about it is also in the same time frame I used
to give my lady fair hugs and I don't do that anymore.
And the reason why I stopped is because the last time I did, I cracked two of her ribs.
Oh my God.
It is totally hysterical and but I mean, you know, one thing was is that I want to touch
upon the way the way training has changed.
Not so much the training itself, but you know, because we see the, on TV, we see the,
the health models, you know, advertising the protein powders and the exercise equipment
and stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
And all those guys are enhanced.
You know what I mean by enhanced?
Do you mean like steroids or yeah, they're all on different amounts of steroids.
And you guys know me, you guys know I love to read research and stuff and pretty much
the last natural guy was a movie actor, became a movie actor named Steve Reeves.
Yeah, that's going back sometime.
Yeah, he was, he was the last guy.
No, he was actually Hercules.
Yeah, he was Hercules.
Oh, okay.
No, that's Italian.
That's Italian.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Now, interesting enough, the other actress with jealous of his physique and he was asked
to shrink for the sake of the movie.
See, that makes no sense.
He's the star.
What do you want Hercules to be the biggest guy on the screen?
Well, he was still the biggest guy on the screen.
He was still the biggest guy on the screen, but people were like dwarfed by him.
So deep geek, could you, can you describe to us at least briefly like what your routine
does consist of then?
Sure.
The latest incarnation involves twice weekly.
I work out with, I do a bunch of exercises.
I start with a dip station, you know, and I do, I do 10 reps there.
And then I do sit-ups, push-ups, calf lifts, squats, kegels.
Then I have the hand grippers, then I go into curls over the head tricep extensions, lifting
up with dumbbell from behind my back to the ceiling.
And then I do a shoulder routine consisting of bent arm lateral raises, moving the elbow
out to hit that, that, that, that what's called the deltoid.
And then I do overhead press with the dumbbell and I finish up with it with a row.
And I increase the weights for a second set and go down the road.
And with the second set also, I begin using lead, lead vests for the calisthenic portions.
Wow.
Wow.
Okay.
And how long does that take you?
Wow.
Are we talking about like an hour of workout every two weeks?
We're talking about 40 minutes.
Okay.
Alright, and I do, I do a 45 minute walk on a daily basis.
And you know, when I was experimenting a couple years ago, I was also trying to see which
I liked better because there's another style working out where you go for like a hundred
reps on an exercise and I was trying 90 minute workout sessions with the weights.
I just couldn't.
I just, it just did not work for me.
So I'm curious psychologically what, what was the input, I know you said a midlife
crisis.
But like, what, can you remember like, what made you think, oh, working out is going
to be the way that I, you know, fulfill myself?
And then retrospectively, what do you think you've gained from all this?
Like psychologically speaking, how did I get to, um, the question I'd like to ask
on this, it's, it's, it's closely related to clatus.
So maybe you can couch it in, in these terms, I'd like to know what it's done for yourself
esteem.
Now it's changed the way I, I, I feel, the confidence, I feel just day in and day out.
And it's, it's, it's not just a matter of compliments, whether verbalized or whether
they're in, in eye contact, people treat you differently.
You can feel people respecting you more as you deal with people on a day and a day out
basis.
You have a mental clarity from it all.
You know, things just, I don't know if, if saying it, you, you, you come into a stress
relieved or anything, but you just, just handle, you're thinking, just proceeds with much
more clarity and things just don't get under your skin because you have a confidence level
that just, it's just fantastic.
I don't know how I came to the conclusion that I was going, I was, I was going to, to,
to get into health and exercise, unless it was just figuring some kind of foot that
I thought it could turn the clock back somehow or, or be the best I could at my age.
Something along those lines, I love the way people talk to me now.
I just, I, I, I can't tell you not to, not to mention sometimes I catch people looking
at me, which is wonderful.
Before you went into this, would you say that your self esteem had some motivation that,
that provided some motivation for the whole thing?
Did you feel that?
Well, I'll, I'll feel better about myself if I do this.
Yeah.
I had that feeling.
I had the feeling I would feel better about, about myself.
I also had the feeling that I could, I could arrest some of the worst effects of aging.
Being like you said, the weight, the stamina issues, finding out all the other health benefits
later was, was, was, was just icing on the cake for me.
One thing we were talking quite a while ago about this by a year ago, I think, you made
one comment that stuck with me and provided real motivation for me during, during my work
out time.
And that's when you said something to the effect that Jacqueline and George Burns lived to
be about the same age.
Yeah.
But, you know, one of that was decrepit and like in, I mean, he would, the guy was essentially
an invalid for the last 20 years of his life.
The other one, Jacqueline got sick a week before he died.
Up until then, that guy, like a year or two before he died, he was still doing all these
physical fitness stunts, like swimming, you know, all these miles and pulling boats with
his teeth and all this ridiculous stuff.
The guy was in amazing shape right up until the time he died, whereas the other one was
sick for a long time.
Yes, they both lived almost the same age or just about the same age, but one was in really
good health for most of that time and that really stuck with me.
Yeah.
But if it doesn't add years to your life, it adds full years to your life, years where
you get to stay active.
Jacqueline is, of course, a tremendous role model.
He was a trailblazer in so many ways.
I mean, yeah, his wiki piti article is actually really interesting.
It's definitely worth checking out that guy had an amazing life and he was almost super
human.
I mean, you read about some of the feats that he did and they're just astounding, they're
just astounding.
What was the one he did for his birthday?
I think it was his 50th birthday and he pulled 50 celebrities in a boat or something.
Yeah.
And he swam like 10 miles or it was 10 miles, 50 celebrities and 50 row boats chained
together.
Yeah.
And it's just, it's crazy.
And he pulled a similar stunt for like a 75 birthday or something like that.
It was crazy.
But you know, and there's all the things that he did, like like the first, the first
health guru on TV, the first exercise machines, the first home exercise machines he invented,
the home juicing machine was first done by him.
Yeah.
He was a trailblazer and plus he did an awful lot of motivational speaking.
He almost, you know, he was a trailblazer at least in the Hollywood circle for all of
that sort of stuff, you know, standing up saying, this is, this is what works for me and
it could work for you type of thing.
So I guess if I can be the skeptic for a moment about this whole health scene for someone
who wants to try out weightlifting, but does not want to invest in three different weight
machines and five different sets of dumbbells and like, is it possible to flirt with this
rather than to like dive in head first and still reap its benefits?
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Sure.
And probably we'll be, we'll be wanting to know what, what benefits you want.
Let's say that if you, you, you really want to have more endurance, you could go to,
I don't know what the equivalent in the country you're in now is, but you could go like
the Walmart, get a 20 pound weird vest and begin walking in that and build leg muscles
that way.
Just by one piece of equipment at a time, you can buy just a 10 pound dumbbell and fool
around with it, you know, and the dumbbell stuff, you don't even have to buy new.
Most people have wanted to get rid of them and garage sales at some point.
That's true.
Yeah.
And some of mine stuff, some of my stuff at garage sales, some of the more weird things
actually, you know, heavy kettle balls and stuff.
I don't have any home machines.
I like the dumbbells because they fit under the bed when they're not being used.
Where do you work out in the, how do you work out like in the bedroom or outside or?
I work out in the bedroom.
I keep a detailed data, a spreadsheet database on, on every workout.
I have three years of workouts going back on the database.
It actually sounds pretty satisfying because then you can actually track like your, your
progress.
You know, like, oh, I was doing 10 kg here and now I'm doing 25 kg here or whatever.
See, now that's an entire industry right there tracking your data.
I mean, those, those fitness watch type, you know, those fitness things.
I don't know what they call them, but the sports watches and, you know, it's a watch,
but it monitors your heartbeat and your perspiration and all that stuff.
One of the big selling points for that stuff is that it'll link up to your computer,
either, either your Mac or your, your PC, they don't do an awful lot with Linux.
Though, I'm sure, you know, I'm sure there are easy ways to do it if you, if you look.
This kind of dovetails into one of the things I wanted to, like, mention or even ask you
about is like, there is so much snake oil surrounding this industry, you know, to the point
where people, I've spoken to people who honestly believe that they cannot get into shape
unless they join a gym, but they honestly believe it because, you know, it's like, well,
it's the only way you have experts there and you have the right machines and you have this
and you have that.
And it kind of astounds me that people feel they have to throw money at this and a lot
of it.
The gym thing, you know, that's good if you're, if you want to, you know, use those, those
machines and go all the way.
But if you, when you begin reading, and by the way, Steve Reeves wrote a fantastic book
on exercise.
That's when I ever read was Steve Reeves, built in the classic physique, well worth picking
up in the use market.
It's a race with yourself.
You don't, you don't need to go that route at all.
The most expensive thing I got was, was the dip stand was $50 at a put pot.
I just, I just was looking at this thing because I have workout information going back to 2015
and I see in December 2015, I'm starting with a goal of eight, two sets of eight dips.
I'm doing three.
That's progressing through 2017, where I have set of 10, followed by a set of 10 with 10 pound
lead, lead, lead way to vest.
It doesn't have to be a rip off.
And you know what, GNC, you know, the supplement stores, yeah, yeah, I mean, vitamins have
always been a rip off.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, I mean, it's astounding how much money they make off of that stuff.
A lot of people don't realize that, but if you need to have, let's say, name a vitamin
you a doctor might tell you might need to have vitamin E, maybe, okay, well, let's say
E.
Okay.
If, if you, if your doctor gives you a prescription for vitamin E and your pharmacy fills
that, that's a different thing than you walking into GNC and getting vitamin E because the
purity regulations about what goes through a pharmacy are that much different than the
regulations for GNC.
GNC is like the wild west snake, or those places, like the wild west snake oil salesman
of the industry.
It's just bizarre.
It's even questionable how much, how much you, how much protein you need while gaining
muscle, you know, I mean, oh, yeah, all those protein shakes and powders and stuff.
And although all the supplements, all the workouts supplements, and again, there are a lot
of people that feel you absolutely have to have these things to see any progress.
Yeah, because TV tells you you have to.
Oh, yeah, well, you don't have to.
You just need, you need a tape measure.
You need a set of 15 pound dumbbells to start with and maybe a 20 pound lead vest that's
adjustable.
You can start with five and that's basics of what you need to get started.
That and the willingness to do the body with the basic body weight exercises, you know,
these things are interesting.
What's interesting when I say the body weight exercises, I really mean what's called compound
exercise that I'm talking about, the pushup, you know, the squat.
These are single exercises that work out multiple, multiple muscles at once.
At the level I'm talking about, that's what you need.
You want to keep the time factory down and you want to hit many things at once.
The dumbbells are great, but they hit specific muscles and you got to have a basis of some
big movements that hit a lot of muscles, whether it be pushups, presses, pull ups, squats,
something like that.
And everybody who gets into this needs one.
One of the older books I read was talking about these compound movements and comparing
a cop and a double amputee.
This is an interesting story because the cop needs to be able to, from time to time,
man and old people.
So you're talking about leg strength, stuff like that, got to get into squats.
The coach, the guy in the wheelchair said I got to do something, I don't have my legs
anymore.
I run a dip stance as well and you're going to be an old guy.
But I do love the dips because it's just, can you explain what dips are and what a dip
stand is?
A dip stand is a thing on the ground that puts a pair of handles around your waist, your
hip saw area.
And then you bend your legs to take your feet off the ground and then you move your body
through space by going down and up, down and up, down and up.
That's a dip.
And that hits your triceps, your chest and your upper and low, you're up a back.
And it's just, it's just tremendous.
I was so happy I began doing the dip so it's like, it's like one of my favorite exercises
now.
Because it's like, it has a gymnast kind of flavor to it that I really, like I told you
that I take this off because of a midlife crisis.
So always young, you know, this makes me feel young that I can just hop on that thing
and go up and down on it at times.
It's just great for me.
So it sounds from what you're saying quite a couple of times that you've said, just things
like this, it sounds like you really set your sights on something immediate and attainable
sort of like, I want to increase my weight from here to there or how many repetitions I
can do from three to eight, rather than sort of having a big sort of picture of, this
is exactly what I want to look like in the end.
Is that accurate or am I am pushing that on you?
No, no, that's, that's absolutely accurate.
And I didn't know why at the time.
I mean, I want to set a realistic goal, a realistic goal and, and keep that without quitting
ever.
My lady says that this is the only fat I've ever not quit to tell you the truth.
Because if I'm not in this game, like, like I told lost in Bronx, I admire Jack Elaine.
If I'm not in for the rest of my life, I don't want to be in this game, I don't want
to do this.
So if you say, I want to look like X, well, Class II, how do you know that the genes in
your body that you were given at birth are capable of getting there?
And then the other question is, whether without drugs, right?
So if you, if you, if you set performance goals and then increment them from time to time,
that's something you can do forever.
That's interesting.
That's actually, that's very interesting because there are a lot of people that that believe
and that are taught because I've seen this from other, you know, suppose at health guru
type people and they owe, how many of them, many of them say you start with the end goal
in mind.
So they actually advocate that you, that you pick a target and say, I want to be like
that guy.
Yeah.
I mean, I mean, you can't, you can't always be like that guy.
You can take, I mean, unless you're someone's genetic twin, you can do the same workout,
you can eat the same food, your body is going to respond differently based on your genetics.
One of the guys who does YouTube videos, I listened to his name is Jason Blaha, kind
of little controversial, but I like his stuff.
One day he answered the question, what are the top three things that make, make a body
build a look like a body builder?
And he said, a number one genetics, number two, drugs, number three diet, and working
out is not on that list.
And it happens to be true if, if, if you can get the right testosterone analogs, your
body will grow, it's, it's, it's, we're, we're computer guys.
We know about technology.
Yeah.
We're running a program, could it's called adolescence and you're running a program
and you're keeping it going forever, he said, it's just gross, you know, and it's, it's,
it's true.
They've done, they've done medical tests and they've, they've had the test group that was just
working out.
And then the test group that was working out with steroids and then they did another
one, there was the test group without working out.
And then another test group without working out with steroids, guess what?
They still gain 30 pounds of muscle and it's, and, and the genetics, the individual results
are amazing.
I was watching one today and I think I actually sent you the video of the guy talking
about it, the YouTube link where they found out that the variance as to muscle body, body
size increase, like say, your bicep can be, can be as different, as different as much
as 60, 60 times response to exercise.
So one guy might get no size increase.
Another guy might have 60 times the size increase, you know, 60 millimeters instead of one
millimeter, whatever it might be for the tape measure.
And the strength, the actual amount, amount, the capability of doing an exercise a certain
weight and having your ability increased to do more weight at that exercise can go up
to something like 250 times the response.
So you can use one person might, might, might be able to do 10 more pounds the next day,
another person can do radically different amounts.
I found when I was starting my first year, nothing every week, every week I was going up
and wake, up and wake, up and wake up and, and then a year into it, it was like hitting
a brick wall, you know, now it's like every month, maybe I add two reps to my highest
weight.
And nature is it's the only sport where your first three years, your first two years
of gains might be the same as your last 20 years of gains.
If it's 20 pounds, the first two years of muscle added to your frame, the next 20 years
after that might be another 20 pounds.
And, and you say that that largely dictated by genetics?
That's hugely dictated by genetics.
And when you talk about, like you talk about the big, the big IFBB pros, you know, the
Mr. Olympus of the world, yes, guys, those guys have top 2% of the population genetics,
every single one of them, every single one of them is on drugs and, and to give you an
idea of how much genetics, even just the way muscle hangs on a body frame, because it's
high, there was only one Mr. Olympia over six feet tall, most of them are 5-10, you know,
because that's, that's a sweet spot for, for, for, for muscle, muscle on skeleton looks.
And that one person was Arnold Schwarzenegger.
So if you, if you, if you set yourself up to try to look like X, you, boy, I, I, I, I, I,
I, I, I, I just think of it wasn't Bronx just thinking about it is disheartening to me.
Well, in my case, my, my primary goal was to lose weight.
That was my primary goal, because I had gotten up to about to 15.
Now it was my highest and for my height and body frame, that was pretty heavy, because
it was all around my middle.
Most of it was right around my middle.
And I wanted to lose as much of that as I could and get down to about like between 165
and 170.
And that would keep me pretty thin.
And I wasn't too concerned about gaining muscle mass or anything like that, because I knew
if I included any kind of exercise into all of that, I would get some gains with regards
to muscles and stamina and all that other stuff.
And a little bit of gain there was all I was really after was primarily the weight that
I was considering.
And most of that, I would say most of the weight, you know, gain that I got were all related
to diet.
They were not related to the exercise.
That's a big thing.
I'm just just three, three or four years into this.
I'm just starting to actually find how to diet without counting calories and stuff, because
I'm up to two, I'm very between 230 and 245 right now.
And this morning I woke up at 224 so I'm just beginning to figure it out.
The diet's the hard part, the diet's the hard part.
It's a hard thing to keep up over time, not so much because, oh, I want to cheat day
or oh, I really want that snack or I really want this.
It's the boredom of eating the same thing over and over.
That's what I found to be a problem, you know, because when you start, you know, I mean,
pretty much they say, if you want to lose a lot of weight, just eat plain chicken breast
and broccoli and you'll just, you'll lose a crazy amount of weight.
But, you know, at the end of a month or two months of that, you want to kill yourself.
But that's why they're losing weight is because if you ate nothing but chicken and broccoli,
you wouldn't want to eat that much of it.
I mean, it's true, there's one way to lose weight and only one way.
And that way is to eat less and exercise more.
And it's, you hear it from my mouth and you go, yeah, I heard it before.
But it's true.
And these guys who say, oh, if you eat a carb-only diet, or if you eat a protein-only diet,
you'll lose weight.
Every single one of those programs, when they put out those guys, the people doing it
into a lab and measured the food, they would eat less calories.
And the only thing that the working hypothesis now is that variety of foods stimulates more
eating, which is a lot like any appetite, like sex, you know.
You get more different variety of stimulus, the more you want it, you know.
But that's what it looks like.
That's never been a secret, right?
Doctors have been saying, if you want to lose weight, eat less and exercise.
Eat right and exercise.
They've been saying it for the last 150 years.
They've been saying it.
And yet, it's still a mystery, right?
It's still a mystery to most people.
Yeah, because most people have some weird psychological block to just doing this stuff.
I mean, I need to see, to be halfway between birth and death to get off my butt.
I think that the matter becomes confused because like, you see all these reports of how
many calories does this food type have?
And people kind of, we all think that calorie is something that you can sort of put on a
scale and weigh and get an exact, oh, this, this piece of, you know, this, this food has
x number of calories and calories is a measurement of potential energy.
It's not something that you can actually definitively say this has x number of calories.
And I always, I get a pity people sort of who try to count calories because it's like,
you're just counting a number that someone has put on a package.
It's like, you kind of have to be more in tune with, with your body, I think, and sort
of kind of know what you, you know, what's too much versus what's not enough.
And I know that's, that's difficult for some people, but I don't think that the calorie
counting really helps in your regard.
I agree with that.
I absolutely agree with that.
I mean, you know, you can have what, like three, you know, 300 calories on your plate.
And it can be composed of heavy pro, you know, like proteins and complex carbohydrates
and all this other stuff, or it can be, you know, like one slice of pie.
And you can say, well, one is better than the other because you're getting, you know,
the only reason that like all of the other food that may add up to the same amount of
calories is better for you is because you're getting more for that amount of energy that's
going with there.
And that's assuming, as Clat 2 is pointed out, that's assuming any of that is even close
to accurate.
If you're getting all the proteins and the complex carbs, you're getting in theory anyway,
you're getting a lot of nutrition with that as well.
And all of the other building blocks that your body requires, as opposed to the slice
of pie, where you're not really getting anything for all of that energy that you're taking
in.
And the idea, of course, is that the excess energy gets stored as fat.
But it, you know, of course, it's nowhere near that simple and people want simple answers.
I think in many ways, I mean, this starts to get into a much more complicated subject
as these types of things do.
People who really, really start getting into this, begin to, they almost evangelize.
And it becomes almost like another religion in their lives.
And they begin to, to complicate the thing far more than it really needs to be.
And so they actually end up doing more harm than good for other people because they make
the thing seem extremely unpalatable.
You know, they make exercise and they make dieting seem really unpalatable.
Not because people are necessarily unwilling to do the work, but because it seems so complicated
and so hard, it's, you know, you don't want to get involved in a thing you don't even
understand.
But about the calories, I think the only thing counting calories on package is good for
is to try it from time to time to identify things, foods that are more high in calories
than you imagine.
I think that's the only real use for it.
I find regulating the number of meals I eat per day is much more significant for me
personally.
But when I was looking at calories on packages, all of a sudden I would be like, this has
X calories and I would be like, what?
And the other thing is what you said about the piece of pie lost in Bronx is I find that
first thing in the morning, you know what?
I want eggs.
I want hot peppers on my eggs.
When I get to 10 pm at night, that's when I want the cookie.
You see what I mean?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But for me, I lost the most weight by cutting out carbs and those are easy carbs like candies
most like breads and most desserts, actually, I, you know, I cut most of those out.
And as anybody who gets into this, especially, you know, dieting, the weight loss, if you,
if you really get into it, the weight loss early on is very impressive, right?
You've become very, you know, very impressed.
And it's what they call waterway.
And it's not that you're actually losing water from your body, but it's, it has to do
it the way the fat molecules are combined in your body so that when they break up, you
know, when it starts to break down in your body, you're losing a great deal fluid from
your body that's associated with the fat, but it has to do it the way the fat molecules
are bound, bound up inside.
That's what you lose early on.
And it's very heartening.
It's actually very heartening because you do lose a lot of weight and it is fat.
It isn't just water, right?
So let's dismiss that and say, oh, it's just waterway.
It isn't just waterway.
It is fat that you're losing, but it only goes so far.
And then you do get a plateau, right?
Or at least I did.
And many other people seem to, and it's probably has to do with the fact that I continue
to do the same thing and didn't change it, you know, and as a result, I needed to start
mixing it up and start changing things.
Well, when your body has so much bone and so much muscle and so much fat in it and
you lose weight, the amount of food your body needs actually goes down again to a different
point.
Do you think, because you said you don't like to change things?
Do you think maybe because if you lost 20 pounds, you should have then begun readjusting
and eating even less than that?
I had it in my head that I probably should have started doing more cardio workout.
Yes, I used the bike, but I had it in my head that I should be doing more with the bike.
You know, I should be spending more time on this.
Well, one of my problems is committing that much time to it.
A lot of people have that as a problem as well.
Um, the fact that they don't have a lot of time or they have this perception in their
head that they don't have a lot of time.
Well, of course, we all have time to do the things that we think are important because
we place them that we give them a very high priority.
The problem isn't that you don't have the time.
The problem is that working out is not a high priority.
For me, it was a priority issue.
Do I want to do more cardio workouts to, to, to, to, to, essentially burn more energy,
burn more calories and not take in more?
You know what I'm saying?
Um, so that there'll be a deficit there that I'll be burning more than I'm actually
taking in.
And I, that was probably where I went wrong.
I'm not certain, but that's how I always fell.
You know, I know I am not going to do more than an hour of cardio.
I know it.
I do not want to spend more than an hour working out in one workout and, you know, one kind
of workout, I should say.
You know, I actually want to do a, do a full workout with, see, 45 minutes or 140, about
40.
Yeah, it's usually about 90 minutes altogether and it's maybe 10 minutes in between.
That's, that's it.
But, but, you know, what you said about priority is very true because, because I have,
you know, the family situation I'm in and I'm helping my, my lady take care of her two
elderly parents and her, you know, brother who had a stroke and there's a lot of work involved
in that.
And then I have the six day a week job on top of it.
And my solution when I got into this was, you know what?
I'm going to kill myself at work and kill myself when I get to my end loss.
I'm going to wake up at four in the morning and get my workout in for me.
That was my solution to that.
There you have an answer to what you said about priority, Western Bronx.
For me, I worked out every day, but I didn't work out for very long.
So it was like 10, 15 minutes every single day.
I don't know, you know, again, and you, I mean, it's a topic that can go on forever and
never have an answer primarily because of what you say.
Everybody is different and they're going to find their own equilibrium.
The one thing I'd like to emphasize to anybody who's thinking along these lines that work
for me is I started off so simple, right?
So ridiculously simple and slow, right?
And that's how I was able to make progress.
I started with two minutes.
I gave myself to do two minutes on the bike a day because I wasn't sure I could do more.
Consistently.
I knew I could do it once.
I could probably do it, you know, for a long, long time once, but what I get back on
the bike the next day, that was the problem.
So to mitigate that, I did, I started off with two minutes because I knew I could take
two minutes out next day and do it and I built that up to going up to 15 minutes a day.
I wasn't sweating it.
It was not a big deal and that's in the only way that worked for me is by taking it slow
and then very, very slowly, incrementally making improvements and changes.
And I think that's the key to anybody's successful work out.
Yeah, start so slow people laugh at you.
I had a problem when I started because I was trying to do a full body workout three days
a week every other day.
You know, so it's three or four days a week and then I would, I would, I would hurt myself.
Twice a week is just fine.
And like I said, I'm in as a life for a lifelong endeavor.
So if I don't gain as fast as I want to in the muscle department, I have all the time in
the world.
Well, lost in Brock's, I think I think you've ended up co-hosting this show with me.
I'm very happy about it.
Yeah, you and I are the old guys here.
Collective, yeah.
No, I've been, I work out as well.
I should, I should point out.
Yeah, I, I get up at 430 for work every morning anyway.
So for the first half hour, I, I work out just with some free weights, just a set of
dumbbells that I got for, for Christmas last year or the year before.
And yeah, it's really short workouts.
It's not, I don't have any actual goals.
I just know that I should be more active because I'm a computer guy and I'm not active.
So that's what I do.
Audio books have been a huge help because that's a great excuse to make yourself, you know,
to give your permission, your self permission to spend a half an hour of your,
your very valuable time on working out.
You know, I always sneak in a chapter while I'm working out.
So it's, yeah, it's, I think it's important.
And I agree with everything you guys have said.
So, um, yeah, I think people should, should work out even if it's just a little bit
just because it is.
The human body is, it's a machine and it's got to be kept up in maintenance.
And it's just a good idea and it's not hard to get into.
Excellent.
I think we can close it down on that note.
Where do you say, guys?
Sounds good.
Thanks everybody.
Thanks everyone.
Thank you, everyone.
You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at HackerPublicRadio.org.
We are a community podcast network that release the shows every weekday, Monday through Friday.
Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by an HBR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast, then click on our contributing to find out how easy it really is.
Hacker Public Radio was founded by the Digital Dove Pound and the Infonomicom Computer Club.
And it's part of the binary revolution at binrev.com.
If you have comments on today's show, please email the host directly, leave a comment on the website or record a follow-up episode yourself.
Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released under Creative Commons,
Attribution, ShareLife, 3.0 license.