Muscle converting to Fat? Ain't nobody got time for dat!

I am sure we have all heard this one way or the other - if you stop working out, all the muscles turn to fat, ergo one should not work out, or they would be trapped and worse off later. No points for guessing my response: I call BS! When I hurt my knee bad, I had to stop for a while, albeit only a couple weeks. When I did resume, I was doing zero cardio and no leg workouts. I did think that I would be chubby again, which is something I later figured FFBs (Former Fat Boys) struggle with psychologically. This was the time, I first got into modelling, the reasoning being, "I better take some pictures now to document my fitness level, because I doubt I will be at this level any time soon." Fortunately, I was wrong, but I am glad that this lead me to try something new, which later turned out to be a confidence booster and a potent motivator.  

The fact that I couldn't do any legs workouts, which are the building blocks of a balanced program, made me much more aggressive towards the body part I could work. My workouts consisted of drop sets, and supersets. I made considerable strength gains, given the constraints of the injury. I was hobbling for almost a month, and the rug getting pulled from under my feet gave me a different perspective. It forced me to do something, I would probably never have tried, which is giving up cardio. By the way, I forgot to mention the secret about why my muscles didn't convert to fat (even making that statement feels like I am talking alchemy). Here is the magic trick: reduce your calories! I was on a 3300 calories diet when I was going berserk on the elliptical or the stationary bike, and I had to cut it down to about 2300 calories. I almost maintained my weight and improved my composition a little (some muscle mass gained, some fat lost) for the next two months. 

In June 2012, I got the chance to go to Okinawa, Japan for three weeks of summer school in computational neuroscience. Believe it or not, I emailed the organisers to ask, if I will have access to a gym while there, and I was told the housing did not have a gym but I might be able to walk half an hour to a nearby gym, which sounded both inconvenient and expensive. I was a little worried, since I did not want a big setback that might result from three weeks of hiatus compounded with not-so-well controlled nutrition. I talked to a fitness expert at UCSD and she suggested some body weight workouts which seemed like a good place to start. As I was looking for other options, I came across P90X, which is a fairly famous workout program that can be done at home with weights or resistance bands. It seemed challenging enough, although I had to modify it to make it work with my injured knee, which was a little better after several appointments with the physiotherapist, but I was pretty certain I won't be running any races any time soon. So, I bought resistance bands and head off to Japan. 

The free food we got at Okinawa was fairly healthy, consisting of seafood, meats, vegetables and fruits. I avoided rice, noodles, etc. and stopped at a small serving of dessert. By the way, the dessert servings in Japan were really small, I would guess less than 100 calories, which is in stark contrast to the servings in America (400 calories for a slice of cheesecake), no wonder there is a difference in how long Japanese folks live vs. the westerners (do not quote me on this, I am speculating and employing hyperbole). Anyways, my diet wasn't perfect like it used to be, but it was good enough. I also carried tupperware so that I could sneak out some food for intermediate meals. I did P90X inspired workout in my room, 4 days a week, and I came back with only a couple extra pound and little to no strength loss. This I call a victory! Lesson being, the nutrition and workout doesn't have to be perfect. Something is better than nothing for sure. Make small changes to eating habits and workouts to build towards cleaner nutrition and focussed workouts. It takes time and experience.

Back in San Diego, I resumed my P90X inspired workouts, since I thought I can make them more challenging with the gym at disposal, and they were faster: ~45 mins of high intensity workouts, 4 days a week. I did a few more shoots which turned out to be pretty well, motivating me further. Next destination on my travel plans was India, to visit family and to attend my sister's wedding, in our hometown of Kanpur. For those who have some familiarity with the town, you would know that the place is no Venice Beach when it comes to fitness. You could also guess the array of responses a statement like this would invoke, "Mom, I will be eating 6 times a day, no rice or poori or parantha (all refined flour breads), strike out sweets while we are at it, and can you not use any vegetable oil, butter or ghee (clarified butter)." After much negotiation, we settled on 4-5 meals, some sweets, barley instead of rice, and occasional parantha. However, when Eid (a big festival), the wedding, and the associated dozen of celebrations rolled in, I gave up and my diet often consisted of just sweets, biryani (basically rice, oil, fatty meats) and such. I had my resistance bands though, and stuck to P90X through it all. As a result, and in spite of all the indulgence for about 5 weeks, I stayed in fair physical condition. Lesson being, for a relatively short period, the repercussions of relaxation in one dimension (here diet) can be minimised by sticking it out on the other dimension (here workouts). But in long term, it is the synergy of both, combined with proper rest that leads to best results. Also, treating oneself once in a while does wonders for psychological well-being.

Continuing on that last note, here is the heuristic I generally use: when I am traveling, I would treat myself to anything and everything, but when home in San Diego, I would stick to a solid plan with few cheat meals where I again let go (ask my friends how I eat at Thanksgiving for example). This way, I can stick to eating really healthy for most of the time, and I don't crave for unhealthy food, since it's almost always on the horizon. Another trick I use to stick to a healthy eating is to set a goal, achieve it, and then treat myself to something. This could be meal in a restaurant I wanted to try, clothes/watches, some gadget, etc. Resuming the story, after spending a month again in San Diego, I got the chance to go to New Orleans, which is a wonderful city, with some of the best food I ever had in my life. I did some science, ate everything NOLA had to offer, partied with friends on Bourbon Street, and all in all had an amazing time.

One thing that had always been frustrating to me is how long it takes to get lean after putting some weight on. This frustration was also echoed by my only friend who is as enthusiastic about fitness as I am. I would come back from travels a few pounds heavy after a week of merry-making, and then work my ass off for a month to get back to where I was before the travel. This is not fun! In essence, I spent 5 weeks, most of which included hard work and solid nutrition, to enjoy a week of break. Around this time I had been reading about more workout philosophies and nutrition styles. I steer clear from fad diets, because of course you can lose 5 pounds by doing the "watermelon diet" for example, which is essentially starving yourself to the point that your body looses all retained water and some fat/muscles. My idea of nutrition is one that is healthy, balanced, and that I can stick to for long term, possibly life. 

In my next post, I would break off from the story-telling, and talk about the nutrition and workout strategies that made me bigger, leaner and stronger. I would go over some technicalities of calorie counting, macro nutrients and may be a few quick recipes, highlighting that it's not as hard to eat really healthy as it's made out to be.

Revival

I have been often asked, "What happened to the blog?" And my evasive (and only partially honest) reply has been, "Well the basics of my fitness philosophy are already there, so not much to write about." To be perfectly transparent, I was keeping myself occupied with academic and non-academic interests, and yes I am calling watching TV shows an interest too. I did keep working out during all this time, and there were several ups and downs. So, let me deviate even father from the pedagogical narrative style, and tell you a bit about how my workouts and life in general evolved since I moved to San Diego for grad school. Hopefully you will also find nuggets of insights in the story, some thing to motivate you towards fitness and overall wholesome life, and this should allow me to segue in to the new things that I tried fitness wise.

I came to San Diego in the fall of 2010, and after a brief stay with my host family, who have been wonderful friends since, moved to the on campus grad housing and started my first quarter. The first shocker was the absence of household help that we start taking for granted. So not only I had classes, some research (this was more me trying to see what the field was all about), singing (I joined an a cappella group) and tai-chi, I was also supposed to do laundry, dishes, shop and clean. Combined with my less than sonnet inspiring cooking skills, I was getting a little lost with nutrition. And one thing that my grad students friends would have experienced, and which started becoming a part of my own eating habit, were the ever present free food events in school. The food lover in me would argue that with consistent workouts, what's a few slices of pizza or some cookies, after all, that should be one of the perks of working out. With the rationalisation in place, I would allow myself a "few" cheat meals per week, and within the first couple of months I started noticing the effects manifested as a layer of fat. This was the first time I noticed my resolve to eat clean failing since I started back in February 2010, and I hit a phase where I just couldn't say no to unhealthy (albeit tasty) food, even though I knew half way through that it is messing up all my work in the gym. I realised I had to do something, this constant submission to cravings would not work!

What I should have done is to avoid the stimulus and practice moderation. But what I did instead was to increase my cardio, and there was a period when I was doing 1.5+ hours of high intensity and HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) cardio. Workout had started becoming a chore by then, and my motivation swayed a bit. The only good that came out of that was an exceptional cardiovascular health, with my heart rate lingering around 40 bpm and my blood pressure around 50/80, which was low enough to make me pass out once (story for another time). This clearly wasn't sustainable, and even with all this work, I wasn't getting in better shape. In fact, I had lost most of my muscle definition and almost reverted back to my before lifting state. I also injured my left knee doing declined bench presses, I felt the knee cap shift and obviously I freaked out. My doctor assured me that no permanent damage was done, but I didn't feel a 100% either.

I spent the spring break of 2011 in San Francisco with some friends, taking a break from heavy workout routine. In hindsight, that is exactly what I needed, a hiatus when I can regroup my thoughts and formulate a more sustainable plan. I also did this: write down whenever I would eat unplanned junk food, which helped my curtail my all-out unhealthy food feasts. The reasoning that they are free wasn't sufficient anymore when I could see how royally that was screwing up my body. I was also getting better with planning my meals, cooking in advance. Now I could cook twice a week and be good for the entire week (which for me is 42 meals). With the train starting to get back on track, I jumped on a 4-days a week lifting and 4-days a week cardio routine, the details of which were very similar to the ones in my earlier posts. This lead to slow yet steady improvement, which continued for one year till the spring of 2012. During this year, I made some head-way on classes and research, picked up a few more fun classes like fencing and dancing, and worked over the summer as an intern at Oracle, Santa Clara.

By the time spring break 2012 rolled in, I was pretty much back in the game, and had been in my cutting phase (loosing fat) for a few months, which is rarely as exciting as bulking phase (gaining muscles) or even maintenance phase. I was sticking to the same nutrition and workout philosophy as I did 2 years back, and I was seeing progress, but lord was it slow! We went hiking around Grand Canyon during this break, and this is when sh*t happened. I have had flat feet, so my knees end up enduring more beating than normal (I also think evolution needs to work on the joints, I mean how crappy are those). Then like an overconfident moron, I ventured for miles and miles of hiking in my gym shoes, as if I can compensate physiological constraints with my high level of conditioning. The end result of the hike was a hurting knee, although we did have a blast. Now here is where it gets a little interesting, and by that I mean I do something even more dumb. I come back and the first thing I do is hop on an elliptical for 45 minutes, aggravating a likely minor injury to the point where it hurt real bad to walk. So, misplaced over enthusiasm can be as bad as the other extreme. All cardio and leg workouts went out the window, and all I could do was to hobble to the gym and lift a little to hopefully keep the routine in place.

Now you might quip, "Well, I get it! You frakked up every so often. How does that help me look like a Norse God?" For one, I think all those Norse Gods were on steroids, so it might be really hard to look like that, unless you are genetically really gifted. Nonetheless, we can try to be our best, and that in itself is a great feeling, with aesthetic improvements as a fringe benefit. In my following posts, I am going to talk about how things changed when I had to completely give up cardio after my injury, the changes I made to my eating habits, as well as workouts, and how I managed to stay in shape through all that. I know this is a cliffhanger, but like they say, "good things come