January 2001 Newsletter

Happy New Year 2001!!!

Christmas holidays are over, and the new year is knocking on the door. My Christmas tree is all dried out and doesn't smell that good like it used to. The holiday season here, in Venice Beach, California, is amazing. Beautiful sunny days with powder blue sky and the birds are all confused and nesting and getting babies. People ask me if I don't miss a white Christmas, and I don't even need to think... "NO!". I like to run around in shorts and a T-shirt in the middle of the winter. The temperatures are climbing in 70s and I still have a golden sun tan. (Well, I must admit that my unlimited membership in Rio Tan tanning salon makes a magic, too).

My training partner Snake left to Denver for holidays, so I am training on my own again. Interesting though, as much as I liked to train with Snake, I like it on my own again. I am much more efficient and more intense. One of my resolutions (or call it a plan) for the next year was to regain my healthy eating again, and stop buying all the nuts. And then December 21, I decided why to wait until New Year, lets start now! ANd lets try to shrink from my 205 lbs under 200 lbs before New Year. So I became very focused, eating my pre-contest nutrition, hitting the gym for my night cardios and leaning out. Cutting out my nut consumption makes a huge difference, just no-nuts make 2000 calorie deficit a day... It is amazing how fast the body changes. I like that. I am 201 lbs and having 2 more days to go. The good thing about my decision was that it made me sane during the Christmas, and I ate very healthy and moderate.

My video will be coming out in January. Lets see if  the producers (Heroine Films) are going to be on time and open their web page as promised. I'll keep you posted.

The Mecca - Gold's gym is full of "big boys" who are back in a training after the Olympia contest. Flex Wheeler, Chris Cormier, Craig Titus, Tom Prince etc. They are getting ready for the February/March contest, and they do all the every-day-and-night training and cardio. Motivating.

And because the New Year is here, and we all have a bunch of resolutions and goals, and many of them are about our bodies (especially when we feel so heavy after the holiday overeating), so this newsletter is going to have a lot of motivational character. Hope it will help you to stick with your plans and reach your goals. Happy and prosperous 2001!!!

Recipe - Egg Nog with Whiskey (as healthy as it gets!)

Home made egg nog, low sugar, low fat, yum, yum. I invited my friends to drink the thing, it was good and sweet and you almost couldn't taste the whiskey. But it was a whole bottle in it! The girls got happily drunk  LOL

2 cans of unsweetened condensed milk (fat free or low fat)
4 egg yolks
Stevia (or other sweetener that you like)
cinnamon, nutmeg
1 bottle Whiskey (or Rom)

Playing the Game of Life

Understand that if your life doesn't work the way you want it to, it is because you have accepted false beliefs and values, that keep you from being all that you can be. Unfortunately, the majority of people on this planet feel stuck. We see people giving up, believing that they have to take from others in order to have anything for themselves. Very seldom, we look within for the answer to this confusion. And what happens is that in our ignorance of ourselves and of life, we hassle, fight and strain to get what we want. And it ends up not working anyway.

You see, life as a game. Some people play the game of struggle. Some people play the game of sickness. Some people play the game of poverty. Some people play the game of being right all the time. Some people play the game of being late. But some people play the game of happiness, abundance and health. It just helps to understand that each individual plays a game that he or she sets up, and that no one game is necessarily better than another. If the game was not bringing us some sort of payoff, we'd stop playing.

Look at your own life. Try to see the secret satisfaction that you get out of not being fully in charge of your life. What kind of secret satisfaction could there possibly be in feeling victimized? How could anyone enjoy feeling weak, or poor or inadequate? Well, the answer is in the payoff or pay value. For example, if you play the weak game, others will have to love you, take care of you and protect you. It is the ultimate way to get attention. If you play the game of being undecided all the time and let other people decide for you, then you are protected from blame if you make a mistake. In other words, if you keep both hands tied behind you, then you can expect someone to take care of you. In playing the helpless routine, you are actually controlling others. The power of "powerless" people is remarkable. They are good at making others play the part that they have written for them.

Look at the value that you are getting out of your payoff. An example is being sick. Look at the value you get out of being sick. You may be saying that is insensitive and cruel. "You don't know what I've been through." No, it's not cruel. It's crueler to ignore it. What you are really saying is that your disease has more power than you do to decide your destiny. The question is, who is giving the illness such power? If you are experiencing sickness, just take a look at it. Let it tell you something. Know that no matter what is going on in your body, it most often begins in your mind. Your body is a reflection of your mind. Your body is your idea of a body. Since your body is a feedback mechanism of your mind, it will always let you know what is going on in your consciousness. Let your body be your teacher.

It is interesting in our society it is totally okay to spend $25,000 on a heart attack, but what would people say if you spent that amount of money on just having fun? They would think you were crazy, and they would probably resent you. It seems we have our priorities mixed up. Perhaps if we spent $25,000 on having fun we wouldn't have a heart attack. Think about it. Having pleasure is abnormal, but having pain is normal...

Why are we waiting to be healthy, to be happy, to be alive, to be wealthy, to start a new business, to fall in love, to communicate, to clear up the relationship we are in? Waiting is a trap. We wait for interest rates to go down, for the economy to get better, for a person to change, for the holiday to pass before starting a diet. But there will always be a reason to wait. The truth is, however, that we can only have two things in life, and that is REASONS or RESULTS, and reasons simply don't count.

Your unlimited power lies in your ability to control your thoughts. All you need to do is to know that you want something better than you have right now. Just keep that thought. Never settle down into self-satisfaction. There is no growth without the agitation of discontent. While it is important to enjoy what you have, it is also important to grow from where we are.  Study your dissatisfaction very carefully because it will tell you something about yourself. The mind attract whatever is familiar to itself. When you come to understanding that everything that you want can be created through your mind, through the use of right thinking, which is simply clear thinking, you come to realization that only you can give you what you want. In your heart, you know exactly what you want. And if you will listen to your intuition, it will tell you. Learn to trust it. As you learn to trust it more and more, it will reveal exactly what you need to do at any given moment.

Your life is important, to you and to the rest of the people on this planet. You were put on this planet to be successful and that success requires no apology.

The Power of Choice

  Choice is born out of opposites, and we are forever challenged to make choices in a world of opposing sides. Every choice that we make matters. Make your choices wisely, because each choice is a creative power. Any choice made from faith has the full power, any choice made from fear is a violation of the energy of faith. However, choice  has a mysterious aspect. We will never completely know the full outcome of any choice we make. This is the paradoxical nature of the choice: what seems right can turn out wrong, what appears good can end up bad. Just when everything is going smoothly, chaos breaks things up.

Paradoxically, we are inclined to control our lives, but the truth is that we cannot be in control of the physical world. Our task is to master our inner responses - our thoughts and emotions - to the external world. We all struggle in seemingly never-ending cycle of disappointment in which we attempt to control our lives. We endlessly search for the one big choice that will put everything in our lives into perfect order, stopping the motion of change long enough to establish final control over everyone and everything. Is that choice the right career? The right marriage partner? The right geographic location? In seeking this one right choice constantly, we give form to our fear of the changing rhythm that is life itself.  In looking for this single external person or thing that will forever bring us peace, stability, love and health, we dismiss the more authentic power that lies BEHIND OUR EYES AND NOT IN FRONT OF THEM. Because the truth within the paradoxical nature of choice is this:

"It is not WHAT we choose that matters; our power to influence an outcome lies in our REASONS for making a certain choice."

So the challenge for us should be to learn what motivates us to make the choices we do. In learning about our motivations, we learn about the content of our minds. Are you filled with fear, or are you filled with faith? Every choice we make contains the energy of either faith or fear. This also guarantees that we cannot run away from ourselves or our decisions.

Build some muscle mass

Now when we have the winter season and our bodies are covered in all clothes, we can allow ourselves to carry a little bit more body fat, and it's a perfect time to eat more and put on more muscle mass.

To build muscles, you have to

• train hard
• eat right
• and supplement smart

Eat Fish

Fatter fish, like for example salmon, for instance, provide us with the  important omega-3 fatty acids. The omega-3s make the muscle more sensitive to insulin, which means that they fuel glycogen storage and amino acids entry into muscles while also preserving glutamine stores.

Increase Sodium Intake

Now this sounds strange. Everybody talks about eating low sodium for your health... But sodium is an essential mineral that is an absolute must for muscle growth. Sodium has a bad rap because it can cause water retention, and that is not really what you want if you are ready to go on a bodybuilding stage. But on the positive side, sodium enhances carbohydrate storage and amino acid absorption while also improving the muscle's responsiveness to insulin.

Increase your calories DRAMATICALLY for three days

You cannot achieve a positive nitrogen balance with a low calorie diet. It takes raw materials - carbs, protein and fats - to build new muscle mass and support recovery. Increasing your calories by 50% (for example from 3,0000 to 4,500 per day) for three days can spur growth while adding little if any body fat. The key is to limit the increased calories to a ONLY three day period; you'll be able to stimulate growth by improving muscle sensitivity to insulin and by providing more carbs for glycogen storage.

Eat in the Middle of the Night

Anabolism depends on an excess of calories. As you are well aware, bodybuilders eat four to six times per day to increase the absorption of nutrients and to provide a steady stream of carbs, protein and fat. Expanding on the four to six meals per day plan is to include a protein drink in the middle of the night that can encourage additional growth.

Stop All Aerobics

Aerobic exercise has a detrimental effect on mass building. Aerobics interfere with strength gains and recovery while burning up valuable glycogen and branched chain amino acids (BCAA). Adding mass is the best way to upgrade your resting metabolic rate (RMR); is the RMR is elevated, more calories are burned and it is easier to stay lean.

Emphasize the Negative

Muscle growth is the logical byproduct of muscle contraction. Much emphasis is placed on the concentric phase of a lift where the muscle shortens as it contracts. But the stretching of the muscle during the eccentric, or negative, phase where the muscle lengthens while maintaining tension can directly cause muscle hypertrophy, too. Emphasizing the negative is an easy technique to
overload muscles and promote radical gains in mass.

Increase Strength Through Powerlifting

Your muscles respond to training in three ways. When you train with high reps (more than 15), there is an increase in endurance with no substantive improvement in size or strength. The six to twelve rep range - the range that all big bodybuilders rely on - promotes an increase in both size and strength. Powerlifters generally stay with low reps, two to four per set, which supplements strength with slight variances in size. However, if you set aside one week of training to pile on the
weights with low reps the subsequent improvement in strength will make you stronger when you return to the six to twelve rep routine. Here's the formula: More strength equals more tension on the muscle equals more growth.

Lift Explosively

The amount of force a muscle generates is proportional to the amount of muscle growth you'll be able to create. Force is defined as mass (the weight you use) multiplied by acceleration (the speed at which you push a weight against resistance). To generate more force, then, progressively increase your poundages while lifting explosively - in this context, you actually increase speed during the second half of the rep.

Rest

Many bodybuilders are unable to pack on mass because they are always training and, therefore, always recovering from those grueling workouts. Taking a couple of days off can restore glycogen, increase anabolism and allow hormonal indexes such as testosterone and cortisol to return to optimal levels.

Supplement with the Big Three: Glutamine, Creatine and BCAA

Glutamine is known as the immunity amino. If you are overly stressed from dieting or training, the immune system kicks in, releasing glutamine into the bloodstream. Having low levels of glutamine will inhibit muscle growth - that's why supplementing with glutamine is important.

Creatine is associate with added power and the ability to produce more adenosine triphosphate (ATP) - the chemical fuel source for training and growth. Supplementing with creatine allows bodybuilders to raise creatine levels in the muscle - therefore enhancing strength and ATP - without the unwanted fat that you'd be saddled with by getting all your creatine exclusively from food.

Branched chain amino acids act as a handy fuel source when glycogen stores are low. Adding BCAA to your nutritional program will increase your nitrogen balance while preventing the dreaded catabolic state that derives from overtraining or overdieting.

Working Bodybuilders
(By Matt Danielson)

When you read about the pros in the Bodybuilder Magazines, you have guys talking about how they make their living in different more or less weird ways. As, the majority of interviewed people say, how could they possibly hold a normal 9-5 job? Well, for one thing, that's kind of tragic. It's my personal belief that some honest work would do some of these guys good! But apart from that, it's a slap in the face to the rest of us, who have a family, with bills to pay, and still struggle to get in better shape. Would you walk up to your boss and say: "Look dude, I feel like my cubicle is holding me back from getting those awesome, striated quads, so I was planning to take the rest of the week off. Oh, and is it Ok if I only drop in on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in the future as well?". Odds are he'd chase you all the way out on the street with a club.

A heartening fact is that the current Mr.Olympia, Ronnie Coleman, is a full-time police officer with bad shift-hours. So much for the pompous Mr.Olympia wannabes that claim they can't hold a normal job. The conclusion is obvious: If you WANT it bad enough, you WILL succeed. It CAN be done. There's no such thing as "not enough time"! Speaking for myself, I'm a 9-5 guy, working long hours at a high-tech company like everyone else in Silicon Valley, with a family and a dog to take care of. In my spare time I'm working on my diet book, my freelance writing, and like most people would think - it IS nice to read a book or watch a movie once in a while! So how do one find ways to work out regularly, when there never seem to be enough time? Not to mention maintaining a DIET! I say - no problemo!

Consistent schedule
First of all, establish a pattern that will work in the long run! Getting your butt into the gym is the first and most important step on the road to physical excellence - if you don't go on a consistent basis, you'll never make any progress worth mentioning. Planning a gym-routine around EXCEPTIONS, as in trying to squeeze gym sessions in as other things drop out of your agenda is doomed to failure. I mean, hey, how often do you say the words: "Gee! Look, I got an hour and a half and nothing to do!"? About as often as a plumber's "first estimate" will end up less than the actual bill. You might end up in a situation where you'll have to sacrifice something else. Well, face it as the choice it is - do you WANT to be serious about the gym, or do you WANT to stay in the local Nose-flute quartet?

Flexibility
Just as it is crucial not to build your workout schedule around some flimsy "improvisation"-plan, it's crucial not to get TOO rigid about your schedule. A 3-day business-trip would smash it totally! Face it - you're living in a high-speed, high-flexible business world. You WILL miss scheduled workouts. Roll with the punches - make sure to reschedule something else that is low-priority so you can catch up the next morning. Sometimes you will have to get up at 5 am, to squeeze in the planned session before work instead of after. Like I said, there WILL be changes forced upon you. Those you can't do anything about. What you CAN do is to refuse being the victim, and succeed through superior willpower and planning ability. This is what REALLY sorts the winners from the losers. Look at Ronnie Coleman if you're not buying it.

Planning
Like I mentioned before, it's the superior planning ability that makes all the difference. A small cooler can be your best friend when keeping your diet. Plan all your meals, from breakfast to snacks to dinner, for the entire week in advance. This will save you money in the grocery store (as you won't waste money on fast food - that you'd mess up your diet with just because you were hungry otherwise), and by pre-making and freezing lunches and similar, you're actually SAVING time during the work-week! An 8 x 8 x 10 inch cooler make you independent of freezers, micro ovens, and restaurants when you're traveling.

Cardio
One of the best ways to incorporate cardiovascular training into your schedule (which is extremely important for a variety of reasons), is quite drastic: Get rid of your TV-couch. Buy a treadmill for you and your spouse, and let the kids have beanbags if they're not all that hot on the idea of working out as they watch their cartoons. This might sound like the most wacko idea in quite a while, but hey! I did it. And it serves as a double function: Not only does it give me a good cardio boost every day, it also drastically cuts down the hours of brainless zapping each week! As you usually are a little too tired to spend an entire night exercising, you have a nasty little way of forcing yourself to get a life instead. Not that I got one anyway, but now I can sit out in the back yard and pretend I have one instead of watching TV. Sometimes I'll even convince myself that I have friends outside the gym, but thatís really going overboard so I usually snap out of it quickly. But the benefit of cardio remains though. :-)
 

Five quick ways to lose fat and feel great

Now for you guys and girls, who's been eating too much during the holidays, and no clothes fit anymore. (I know what I am talking about! The picture is a proof, I got caught in action, at Gold's gym anniversary party, where I ate the whole table of goodies, sweets, brownies, pies... By the way, the man on my side, or uder my arm?, is Rob, the human barbel). Now  it's time to refocus again and get disciplined. Start with the basics tips for a few pounds fat loss.

1. Cardiovascular exercise. You spend at least 30 minutes per night flipping through the dial with the channel changer. Instead, put your feet on the street for the half- hour of running, walking, or biking, 3-4 days per week.

2. Drink water and lots of it. Water will help drain your system of unwanted toxins that will keep the sag and flab in your body. Consume 100 oz of water per 100 lbs of your body weight per day as if your body depended on it.

3. Snack frequently. If you make a big deal out of a big meal, try instead to prepare smaller meals, say six a day, while keeping from becoming too hungry or too full. This should shoot your metabolism into overdrive.

4. Fit the fiber into your diet. Fiber is an excellent component to losing weight in that it fills you up, but now, recent studies conclude that it keeps your body from absorbing calories.

5. Lift weights. It is a proven fact that muscle burns up about 20 times the amount of calories that fat does. Your metabolism increases and you will burn more calories during the day. If you eat the same, you will naturally lose some fat, AND FEEL GREAT

HAPPY AND LEAN NEW YEAR!!!