Expert Fitness Advice: 10 Keys to Losing Weight

Losing weight is a science.  A surplus of calories mean you will gain weight, while a deficit means you will lose it.  It's generally recommended that you have no more than a deficit of 500 calories per day if you want to lose weight (anything higher could be seen as starving yourself, which does more harm to your body than good).  This equates to one pound per week (3,500 calories are required to burn a pound) and 5 pounds per month.  So put on your lab coats: here we'll discover how to burn enough calories to get rid of that pesky body fat. 

In order to find out how many calories you should be eating, first calculate your basal metabolic rate and factor in any activities you do.  You can easily find this using a Google search; all you need is your height, weight, age, and sex.  Don't forget to add calories for any activities that you burn a lot from doing throughout the day.   A high activity level means working out 5-6 times a week, or working at a strenuous job.  A medium level means working out 3-4 times, or working at a moderately strenuous job.  Low level means you're pretty much a couch potato and work at a desk. 

In order to lose weight, your goal is to reach 500 calories less than your BMR every single day.  Here are some tips that will help you achieve that: 
 
1.  Only eat when you are hungry.  This will help keep your metabolism high.  A high metabolism means you will burn more calories through the day.  In order to do this, eat slowly and stop at the exact moment you feel full.  When you stuff yourself it slows down your metabolism because a lot of blood goes to your stomach to aid in digestion.  Only eating when you are hungry means you will eat smaller portions, but you will be doing it about 6 times per day to keep your metabolism up. 

 
2.  Break a sweat at least once a day.  Exercise is crucial to any diet plan.  You don't always have to do the same exercise.  Find a nice balance by engaging in different activities throughout the week.  If you accidentally eat too much, a good way to remedy that is simply by burning it off. 

It's also important to break a sweat because the modern diet is loaded with sodium.  Think of sweating as a detoxifier of all the excess salt you might be eating.  One liter of sweat- meaning the 1 liter of water required to replenish it- rids your body of about 900mg of sodium, which is almost half the daily recommended value for most people.  The DRV is about 2,000mg.  It would be a good idea to keep track of your sodium intake for a few weeks, just to see if you're eating too much of it. 

 
3.  Walk more.  Over its long history, the human body evolved to walk and run.  The principle is simple: do more of what the body was meant to do, and it will look more like it should.  Modern living provides many shortcuts that our ancestors never had the privilege of using.  Don't be lazy!  Unless you're late for a meeting, park farther away from buildings and take the stairs more often. 
 
4.  Remain confident and determined.  Don't check the scale every day to see if you lost any weight.  Body weight fluctuates daily depending on hormones, how much you ate, and your digestive efficiency.  Furthermore, it discourages you to keep going because the tendency is to notice how little change is being made. 

 
5.  Drink water only: no soda or sports drinks.  Many excess calories come from soft drinks, which provide energy early on, but can cause a crash later. 

 
6.  Moderate sugar intake.  If you're addicted to sugar, outsmart it.  Only eat it before you worked out.  Doing it this way will give you more energy for your activities.  

Foods high in sugar tend to be high in carbs as well.  Go for a high carb diet if you're losing more than 500 calories every work out.  A lot of diet experts will tell you to eat low carbs, but don't do this if you're working out a lot.  Carbs are important for athletes because they're efficient at storing energy.  Marathon runners and high endurance athletes engage in something called "carbohydrate loading" the day before their events.  Keep in mind that when carb loading, you shouldn't be eating foods that contain a lot of sugar. 
 
7.  Get 7-9 hours of sleep per night.  This should be a no brainer.  Sleep deprivation means you won't burn your calories as efficiently, and are less likely to have a good work out.  Adequate sleep also gets rid of the need to drink caffeinated beverages or consume other stimulants. 
 
8.  If you accidentally binge, just drink water.  If you get really sharp hunger pangs hours after you've binged, drink some water and don't eat anything.  You won't feel hungry for another hour or two, and the pangs won't be as sharp.  If you binged on only one thing, your body's nutrients will likely be out of balance.  Water helps regulate this as well. 
 
9.  Your diet needs variety, including protein and vitamin D rich foods.  Make sure you're eating all five food groups in moderate balance, and that you're getting your vitamins. 

Protein helps repair our bodies after strenuous exercise.  Good sources of protein are dairy products, meats, seafood and poultry. 

An often overlooked vitamin deficiency is vitamin D, which we mostly manufacture from the sun hitting our skin.  Indoor living is a high risk factor.  Seafood and dairy products are high in vitamin D, but still not enough.  A supplement can help. 

 
10.  Seek encouragement.  Let your friends know how you're doing: we'll support you!    

Italia

            The cityscape of Rome is a classic of classics, like the mythological catalogue that started it all, written here during Augustus’ reign.  It’s an undulating flow of intricate transformations, pasted on the canvas of a Mediterranean atlas, in which Gods, Goddesses, and humans cast their passions on the compass, told in a sprawling web of lingering sentences that meander through history like the course of the Tiber, running free under the chariot of the Latium sun.  The arches and ruins of Capitoline Hill captivated me; the Coliseum was Jupiter’s broken behemoth, struck by lashes of his celestial lightning.  Peddlers and students mingled on the Spanish Steps, the frenzy of their chatter disorienting, international.  Lions perched under obelisks in Popolo Square, aquatic deities wrestled each other in the Trevi Fountain.  The entire country of the Vatican was baroque, far from broke; exquisitely detailed paintings presented with sculptures at the nodes of vortices lined by tapestries adorned the museum, holding works intended for Christendom yet more influenced by the pagans of old.  In the basilica of St. Peter’s, Bernini's Baldachino showcased an original visionary and talent; his fingerprints are all over the city, like Pluto grabbing hold of Proserpina in one of his most famous sculptures.  Outside of the Pantheon I had the best rigatoni of my life, while a mime entertained passersby and a man sang opera underneath its echoing columns, so that it gave the paradoxical impression of a serene carnival mixed with an expressive, refined troupe of talented performers.  The waitress was cute and voluptuous, the moon shone brightly with Venus under its rim.  On the walk back, after a young woman rubbed her breasts right in front of me, I wandered into a gelato store and tried to speak Italian with another flirty lass.  Strawberry fragola on a wafer cone became my new obsession: the best ice cream in all the world.  I smiled and licked it, pretending I was sucking in the ice cream girl’s sweetness. 

Then came the coast of Amalfi, whose cliff-side road wound like a rollercoaster on the edges of mountains, where death-defying houses sat on terraces nestled between the cliffs.  Unique flowers and plants grew in union with the geologic and architectural precision of the coast.  It was a paradise for romantics, surreal and breathtaking; should I ever plan a honeymoon, it would be here.  From a boat we saw the coast, gorgeous from afar, and both Capri and the cliffs that protect Sorrento like a fortress.  The shadow of Vesuvius possessed us with an urge to visit the ruins of Pompeii, which lays there like a cadaver, sweltering in the September heat. 

In Sicily the Monreale Cathedral enclosed golden mosaics that dressed the Christ Pantocrator in heavenly-spiritual garments, and Enna was a town built atop a mountain- a place of Greek feminine worship- that looked out at the jungles of Giarre sitting on the slopes of Mt. Etna.  The hostel we stayed in had grape orchards, friendly animals, and mafia jazz playing on Sunday evenings.  I fell in love with the goats, the cows, and the chickens who would all chatter in alarm, challenging one another whenever the sun rose or fell, or when thunderstorms marched over the land.  The dog I named Vespucci, short for Amerigo Vespucci- the Italian sailor, first to land in the U.S.A.- but I called him Poochie for short.  One sunny morning I awakened in the most fantastic of moods.  A soft breeze blew in from the sea.  A cat lay on my lap as I ate fresh grapes, grapes that had come from right off the farm, still robust from the hearty fuel of the sun.  We drove through Catania, then up the side of Mt. Etna, which had no lava to behold, but the views of the island were vast.  That evening was magical- much like the one outside the Pantheon- when the moon shone full to the east, large on the Mediterranean horizon, and the volcano vented above the nervous land below her.  We could see her red rivulets of lava from sea level because the darkness of night enhanced their color, making Etna shine like a mighty lighthouse for Neptune.  On the other side of the bay glowed the nightlife of Taormina, surrounded by thick suburban brush.  I imagined that I’d fallen in love with a Sicilian girl, and we sang and danced in the orchards before falling into a bed of shaded palm trees together. 

Last came Florence, my city of dreams, my heaven on Earth.  The arrangement of color on the Duomo facade, with its spinning rose window and marble tympanum, gave it the appearance of a gothic flower withering under the weight of the Renaissance.  Colorful heaps of gelato lined the shop windows; an evanescent sunset lit up the Arno.  The Piazza Della Signoria sprouted the chaotic choreography of dynamically powerful statues, such as The Rape of the Sabine Women, which tells a profound story of loss simply by looking at it.  Both the Bargello Museum and the Pitti Palace behold countless artifacts and appliances sketched with the finest precision and detail, mesmerizing to the senses even today, centuries after the artisans created them.  The streets of Florence still glisten with the finest crafts, jewels, and necklaces in all the world, perhaps even the universe.  Behind the Pitti Palace I strolled through the Boboli Gardens, which are a maze of fountains patrolled by statues betwixt rows of alberos and courtyard hedges.  From up on the hill, I saw the Duomo from the Belvedere, which, second only to the city-wide vistas from atop its Belltower, holds the grandest view in all of Italy. 

Out past the dry fields of rolled-up haystacks, cypress and olive trees, blue chianti grapes, kitchen gardens that smell of savory herbs, poplars where figs, apples, and cheese wheel cakes design the dusty hills of Tuscany, I finally came to rest on red stones in the square of Siena, whose cathedral is even more transcendent than St. Peter’s, and more colorful than the Monraele.  Geese flew above, children chased each other on the street.  It was time to go home and leave this old world behind.  Perhaps I should return with a child of my own someday, so that he may witness the intricacies of a culture far more appreciative of fine detail, patience, and the echoes of its past. 

1995 Mariners

    The timing couldn't have been more right for one of the most magical seasons in sports history.  I was 11 years old and just beginning any boy's fascination with the sport of baseball when the Seattle Mariners did the impossible: came back from 13 games behind the California Angels and won the division.  For much of the beginning of the season, up until late August, the Mariners had been way behind the Angels in the standings, so much that nobody in the world of sports thought they could have made a comeback.  But they did, and it was a great time to a fan of theirs.
    In late August, the Mariners were 13 games behind the Angels and one game under .500.  Playing the Yankees at home, Ken Griffey Jr., arguably the best player in baseball at the time, came up to bat with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning.  Ken had just come back from a severe wrist injury that had put him on the bench for most of the season.  He hit a two-run home run to win the game for the Mariners with that sweet swing of his.  Unknowingly, he’d started a chain reaction that wouldn’t end for weeks.  No one could have possibly known it would become the spark that ignited one of the great Cinderella seasons in baseball history.  It's as if he’d lit an Olympic torch with his game winning home run, and each Mariner in turn played a part in relaying it to the finish line.
    From then on the Mariners just kept on winning.  What's even more striking is the way in which they won all those games.  On September 10th, Joey Cora hit an 8th inning double on the road to help the Mariners earn a victory.  Another come-from-behind victory came against the Twins on September 13th when Jay Buhner hit a 3-run home run in the bottom of the 8th to defeat the pesky Kansas City Royals- a team who’d been leading the wild card race at the time.  At this point, the Mariners were just two games behind the Royals and five games behind the Angels: an improvement of eight games in less than a month.  Norm Charlton also earned his 9th save in 15 games.  Three days later, another Mariner hit a walk-off home-run; this time it was Dan Wilson’s turn.  Three days after that, Doug Strange hit a home run in the ninth inning to tie a game, setting up Ken Griffey Jr. to hit a game winning single in extra innings.  The Angels then lost five games in a row and the Mariners took the division lead with 10 games left in the season.  That means they’d gained 14 games on the Angels in less than a month.  This seems remarkable in itself, but the magic didn’t stop there.
    They swept the Rangers easily; then they swept the hated Oakland Athletics.  The series against the Athletics was the second most memorable of the season.  In game 1 they were down 6-0 and scored four runs on Vince Coleman's first ever career grand slam.  After Edgar Martinez hit a home run to tie the game, Alex Diaz hit one that won it.  In game 2 the 6’10 pitching ace Randy Johnson, that tall and lanky harvester of doom, shut them out on 15 strikeouts.  Game 3 was a see-saw game, arguably the most exciting of the season.  First Edgar tied the game with a double in the 7th, then Norm blew a save by allowing Danny Tartabull a two run home run.  In the bottom of the ninth, Tino Martinez was the next Mariner to join the hero parade.  Legendary Mariners announcer Dave Neihaus made this famous call when it happened:

    Here’s the pitch to Tino: swung on and belted, deep to right field and that will fly away!  And the Mariners win it 9-8, in perhaps the most incredible game in their history!  Back and forth, back and forth and Tino Martinez has his second home run of the game!  Unbelievable!  Off Dennis Eckersley!  And forty six thousand fans are losing their minds here in Seattle.  Tonight I’ll guarantee you it will be sleepless in Seattle for everybody who was here today, including me!

    A few days later, Neihaus made another famous call in Texas.  It was after Ken Griffey Jr. stepped up to the plate with the game tied, two outs, and the bases loaded:


    Swung on and hit deep to right field and it’s... Get out the rye bread and the mustard grandma, it’s grand salami time!


    At that point I couldn't believe what was happening.  Every time the team made a dramatic comeback, my excitement increased to levels I’d never known.  It was as if the Gods of baseball had opened up a portal to another dimension where all my dreams were coming true.
    At the end of the season the Angels made a comeback of their own, tying the Mariners for first place on the last game of the season.  There was a one game playoff for the division title, and it shut the entire city down.  At school every classroom’s television was tuned into the ballgame at the Kingdome, where Randy Johnson was throwing a perfect game into the sixth inning.  The game was tied at 0 in the seventh when the Mariners loaded the bases for Luis Sojo, another unlikely hero.  Out of all possible scenarios, Luis hit a ground ball down the right field line that got under the glove of the first baseman.  Somehow the ball got lost in the Angels bullpen, and before the right fielder could throw it back to the infield everyone had scored and Luis was on his way to third.  The ball was overthrown and when Luis rounded third base the Kingdome practically exploded with joy because everyone knew he’d make it home on an inside-the-park grand slam.  The look on Angels' pitcher Mark Langston's face after that was an absolutely priceless expression of disbelief.
    Eventually Randy Johnson gave up a run, but he pitched the game all the way to the finish.  He lead the Mariners to a 9-1 victory and a first place finish in the AL West.  The last pitch was a called strikeout, and no one will ever forget Randy's long arms extending to the sky just before the bench-clearing victory mob swarmed him with celebration.
    The Mariners saved their best for last in the 1995 ALDS against the Yankees.  They lost the first two games in New York; game 2 was a heartbreaker that went fifteen innings, but no one in their right mind would have counted this team out.  I certainly didn't, and nobody else in Seattle did either.  After the Mariners won game three, the biggest hero of them all, one Edgar Martinez, really took late inning dramatics to a another level.  In game four he hit a three run home run in the third, but the Mariners were still behind 5-4.  In the 8th inning, the game was tied at 6 when Edgar came up to the plate with the bases loaded and launched a grand slam to win the game.  Then in game five, arguably the greatest moment in Mariners history came during the 11th inning after the Yankees had scored a run in the top half and threatened to win the series.  Joey Cora laid down a fabulous bunt hit up the first base line, just like he'd done before Edgar's grand slam in the game before.     Then Griffey got a base hit up the middle, which sent Joey to third.  With runners on the corners and the Mariners down by one, Edgar approached the plate.  At this moment, you could almost sense the culmination of a month's worth of magical wonder rising off the floor of the dome, ready to decide the outcome of another close game in which they'd come from behind; from behind in all three facets- season, series, and game- against stupendous odds, making it all seem like something out of a fairy tale.  With the count 1-0, Edgar sent a line drive down the left field line, scoring Joey easily.  Junior ran as fast as his legs could carry him.  The throw was accurate but late, and Junior slid into a pile of white jerseys with happy faces under an umbrella of fireworks that alighted the Kingdome in an explosion of rapture:

    [The pitch is] swung on and lineddowntheleftfieldlineforabasehit!  Here comes Joey!  Here comes Junior to third base they're going to wave him in!... the.throw.will.be.late.the Mariners are going to play for the American League Championship and it just continues!  I don't believe it, MY OH MY!


    In the ALCS, the Mariners faced their greatest challenge, a Cleveland Indians team that had doubled up on their wins to losses (which is pretty rare in baseball).  They were a classic offensive juggernaut; as a team they’d ended up batting around .300 for the whole season.  The series wasn’t even close; the Mariners lost it four games to two in what was surely an anticlimax to the season.  In the World Series the Indians lost to the Braves in a major upset.
    It was a run for the ages though.  Victorious underdogs are the pride of an oppressed people, for the people are always unfavored against the powers that rule them.  A sports team can resemble a nation’s struggle against forces above them, forces that are set into motion by things like war and economics.  Strategies are drawn up, odds are weighed, and if by some miracle the people win the day, their momentum increases and the oppressor’s fear increases.  The 1995 Mariners were like guerilla soldiers ambushing legions of the finest warriors, who had better weapons and larger numbers.  Their hearts were steadfast against teams like the Angels and the Yankees, and for that we salute them.

The Chiming Seashore

The wind lapped our faces as we stumbled down an uprising to the sand below.  We dug our bare feet into the sediment, racing to defeat one another at an invisible finish line marked on the shore, where crashing water splashed us with the carefree exuberance of an ancient friend, one that had been waiting us longer than anything else in the world.  It was the ocean; an eternal womb of procreation, a chasm that spawned the surge of evolution, sprouting all of life’s divergent branches, accumulating each phylum’s peculiarities, observing our journeys through the annals of history, watching as we die and awaiting our return through each successive reincarnation, from the first formations of paramecium to the more advanced mammals now roaming the land above it.  The ocean resembles opportunity, escape, and transformative power.  As a network of water reaching across the planet, it cleanses the Earth of its impurities, connecting us all in a web of communion.  Through maritime travel, we extend the present from the past every time a new sea is reached, and it greets us with swarming hugs from the waves that crash upon its beaches, kindling in us the love we felt after it birthed us, and the admiration of its perennial patience.  

Even though I’d always been afraid of that abyss of mysteries, this was a time when the joy of my family vacated from me any threat or doubt, instead drenching my heart in its contagious remedy, causing joyful springs of lovely abandon to reverberate through the cliffs of the seascape.  It allowed me to temporarily forget the pangs of pre-adolescent confusion, tossing me back into the blithe moments of childhood like a penny belonging to a peddler, once hefted, flipped, and considered upon- comfortable in his palm- before being catapulted into the fountain before him.  My brother and I challenged the waves with our mother watching, going out a little farther each time we withstood one that had successfully knocked us down, daring each of them to carry us out into the ocean.  The overwhelming force of the water would swallow us and, luckily, spit us back out onto the shore instead of drowning us a foolish death.  With the taste of salt stinging our mouths, the sound of gulls cawing from above, the delight of our mother clapping and singing along to the rhythm of the tide- laughing at us every time we fell, laughing lavishly, laughing to the rhythm- the smell of seaweed that seemed to personalize the ocean with a familiar odor, the rising evaporation on the horizon shrouding us in harmony, and the sensation of everything in the universe witnessing our excursion, came together in unison to inject me with the thrall of enchantment.  As one particular wave came in, I gesticulated in delight- part ravishment, part apprehension- to the rising foam of a liquid beauty that had escaped from the clutches of a ocean, the biggest one we’d seen all afternoon.  And in that moment of fractured reality, I became disengaged, drawn to the sideways parabola of the wave, which, to my obliterated senses, began transforming into strands of human hair that curled upwards into an aqueous face animated with joy.  The sanctity of the moment was radiant in its eyes: two sparkling irises in front of a crystalline pattern of light that was showered by the sun’s penetration on the ocean surface beyond.  As the wave fell upon me, a mermaid of love outstretched her arms from above the crest, causing my own arms to reach high into the air in imitation for the embrace of the breaker, which had miraculously incarnated into a liquefied version of my mother. 

The wave knocked me backwards and the fruits of sanity returned to my head.  I came to my senses, got up from the sand, and saw that my brother had been pushed even farther back than I had.  But he wasn’t hurt; he had that wide-eyed rapture in his eyes, that invigorated joy I can remember so well.  He was exceptionally happy, and so was I; so were we together- all three of us- content for the first time in months, charmed by the solitude of my mother’s favorite place, the chiming seashore.