Cousins...

I've mentioned my cousins, Phil and Amy Parham, on here before. Contestants on last year's "The Biggest Loser" on TV, they've both continued their fitness lifestyle and are helping other people lose weight and change their lives. They're also finishing up their first book with Harvest House Publishing, soon to be in stores everywhere. I'm so proud of them! I'll be hanging out with them some next week when I go to see our extended family up in the old hometown, Greenville , SC. Should be a fun time!

Quick Update...

Just a quick update. After upping my calories a few weeks ago ( 2100 per day) , I have indeed noticed some progress. Been having my best workouts since I started HIT: more weight, higher reps, quicker recovery. Also, I SEEM to have reversed the fat gain trend, and in fact have dropped a couple of percentage points. This past Friday I was down to 12% again. 10-12% is probably best for my age and genetics, Darden and I have decided. And my weight is about 175. I'm no math whiz, and don't have the time to figure it out, but I think it's pretty clear that I've put on more muscle than fat now. Adding some creatine back in to my regimen this week... will keep you posted.

"Eat More Calories !"

Yep, not often you hear a trainer say that. But that is indeed what my trainer, Dr. Ellington Darden, told me today.

Ya see, I don't want to go into detail and get too personal, but life has been kind of hectic around my house lately. My wife's parents aren't doing well, and that's meant she's gone a lot. Which leaves me trying to pick up the slack. "Mr. Mom", they call me. LOL Doing a lot of "school runs" with the girls, homework help, keeping the business going, and getting less sleep than I'd like. So, Ellington's guess is that my system is stressed and in a bit of "Survival mode" right now. ( Hey, I READILY admit, I've got it easy, next to my poor wife... I wouldn't trade positions with her for anything!)

Our bodies don't like stress. So, they tend to shut down fat burning, and hold onto the fat. For me, that means right around the mid section. This is real life, not a Hollywood movie... we go through stuff, and it affects our bodies. Weight loss... or "getting into shape", as I refer to it, isn't a straight line. There will be ups and downs. So, I'm UP to 171 lbs and right about 14% bodyfat now... the most I've been in six months or so. Yikes! Glad we took the caliper readings today. That's important to do regularly, for just this reason.

So, Ellington's remedy for this is for me to "de-stress" my body... get more sleep, relax ( ha! I'll try), and eat more calories. 300 more per day, actually. That'll put me at 2100. Also, eat some steak every once in awhile, I believe were his exact instructions.

Gotta love training advice like that! Everything else he's said has worked like a charm, so I'm sure this will too. I'll keep you posted!

...Keelan

HIS temple

1 Corinthians 6:19 NRSV) Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?...


...I've been thinking a lot about this over these past nine months, since I started training the right way ( i.e. HIT training). It has seemed that the better shape I get in, the better I eat ( and yes, that often means the LESS I eat), the closer I feel to God. Seriously, I have had a spiritual awakening this year as I've had a physical rejuvenation.

It makes me think to the old "Muscular Christianity" adherents back in the 1890s or so. Right about the time the pentecostal churches started, and the spiritual awakening here in the U.S. and Wales. ( Charles Fox PARHAM, btw, a distant cousin I guess, was called "The Father of Pentecost".) Do I see a connection between the "physical culturists" movement and the spiritual awakening? My guess is yes. First the physical, then the spiritual, it seems. Which makes sense, since we are in a physical body ( or "earth suit", as I like to say). Now does this mean out of shape people aren't or can't be close to God? Of course not. I'd never presume to say that. However, it seems to me that taking care of our bodies is a God given responsibility. ( One that I haven't always done well on myself... so no stones are being thrown here! Glass houses, you know!)

Just something to think about...



The way we treat our body is one measure of our attitude to God Himself. It surely doesn't honor Got if we allow His temple to becaome a polluted, poisoned, owheezing, over-weight and out- of -condition hulk of flab... ( "Healing Anointing", by Colin Dye).

Genetics, Part 1: Chicken Legs

Whatcha gonna do? Maybe it's not as bad as the illustration above, LOL, but I learned about six months ago that I am stuck, genetically speaking, with what I call "chicken legs". Thanks, Mom and Dad!

When I first started working out with Dr. Darden, he did a "visual evaluation" of me. To see what my weak points and strong points are.
It seems that God gave me "high" calf muscles. Hopefully this quick sketch shows how this refers to the length of the muscle, the muscle belly, and the insertion points. In layman's terms, no matter how "big" or strong my calves get, they will always be "high" with a lot of distance between the bottom of the muscle and my ankle. As opposed to this:
This sketch shows longer calf muscles. Built up properly, this leg will look pretty big. Mine, not so much. Unless I go in for calf implants.... and I'm not gonna EVER do that... I will be stuck with "chicken legs". Oh well. Chicken legs are tasty. I'll just make them the best chicken legs I can!

You live long enough, you hopefully stop worrying about the things you can't change. The lesson about genetics? Make the most of what you have, and don't fret about what you don't have. Identify your strong points ( I was told that for me it's chest and arms), and your weak points ( for me, calves and lack of abs). Work on both of them, maximizing your potential. That's important... YOUR potential.

Be the best YOU that you can be.

Give a guy a shovel....

Good friend and trainer Dr. Ellington Darden told me a story awhile back. I believe it was Arthur Jones, the Nautilus inventor, and Ellington's old boss, who told it to him. Basically, it goes something like this:

Let's say you walk up on a guy feverishly digging a hole with his hands. You ask him what he's doing, and he replies that he's digging a well. It just so happens that you have a shiny new shovel in your hand, so you offer to let him borrow it. He says, suprisingly to you, that he's never seen a shovel before. He's so excited, and lauds your praises as he begins to do three, four times the amount of work with the shovel that he was doing with just his hands. Satisfied that you've helped someone, you walk off feeling very good about the situation. A few days later, you come back to check on the guy's progress. Your shovel is tossed to the side, and he's back to using his hands to dig. When you ask him what's up, why did he toss the shovel, he answers " I just decided to go back to using my hands... I was used to them. I wasn't used to the shovel".

At least that's the way I remember the story. Basically, the moral that Jones was getting across is that people like to continue doing what they know, even when it's wrong and not producing results, rather than changing their ways and trying something new and better. It's the rare person who can stop what they're doing and do something new. We don't like change.

I've had a lot of opportunities in the past few months to see this story play out in my own life. Look, I'm certainly no expert on HIT training, and I have a ways to go before I'm where I want to be, but I've had countless people ask me how I've lost so much fat, how I've put on the muscle I have in such a short amount of time. When I explain HIT methods to them... about working out harder, working out shorter, working out less, no cardio, resting more, drinking a gallon of water each day, and eating smaller meals 5-6 times per day, you can see their eyes glaze over. Then, the very person that's been complaining to me how they can't make progress anymore with their workout or diet routines, starts telling me how great their split routine, heavy on the cardio, 3-5 days a week workouts are.

Huh? Oh well, Darden told me this would happen.

Sister Blog

My family and I eat out so often, I thought I'd start a restaurant review blog as well. If you're interested, give it a visit. Hope you find it useful!
http://keelaneats.blogspot.com/

On the Book Shelf: Body By Science

I read a lot. Religion, conspiracies, comic books, cartooning, and fitness books fill my rather substantial amount of book shelves. My trainer, Ellington Darden, had this book on his shelf recently and I borrowed it over a weekend. I couldn't put it down! It's been a long time since I've borrowed a book I then decided I HAD to own, but MY copy of "Body By Science" came in from Amazon just this week.

This is truly a manual for the science of building muscle. Over the past six months, since I've been with Dr. Darden, I have taken a crash course on the correct way to build muscle, burn fat, and work out the High Intensity Training ( HIT) way. "Body By Science", and Darden's many books, have made an incredible impact on me.

I think, for me, "Body By Science" really hit home because it helped explain further some concepts that Darden has been talking to me about for months. First, with HIT, it's all about brief, intense exercise with proper rest and diet. Then there's how that training affects different people, depending on their age, sex, and genetics.

In particular, it helped me understand fast muscle fibers. Darden has said for awhile that I have more of this type, but I didn't understand exactly what that meant, or what it meant for my training. After "Body By Science", I do. Suffice it to say, fast twitch muscles fibers exhibit a lot of strength, and can grow bigger than slower twitch fibers. However, they also tire quicker, get more sore, and take longer to heal. This is exactly the reason I am now continuing to make gains ( five pounds of muscle in three weeks) while on a "one workout every two weeks" schedule.


Think of "Body By Science" as a handbook for getting your body in shape. It's not a shallow read... believe me, some of the scientic jargon in it takes a while to understand. But go grab a copy, and you won't be sorry!

Neckline Slimmer: REALLY?

Being a cartoonist, I like to stay up late and work when the phones aren't ringing here in the studio, and then watch a bit of TV or read before bed. The problem with watching TV? Weird infomercials late at night. A popular one right now is the "neckline slimmer". I don't know if you've seen it, but it runs where I live all night long.

Supposedly, with this little device you can take years from your face, firming your jawline, etc. Now I don't want to be skeptical, but.... REALLY? Come on!

If anyone has used one of these and HAS had the desired results, feel free to let me know.


REALLY????

In the Fridge... : GREEK YOGURT

Man, I love this stuff! I discovered Greek Yogurt about a year ago, and was blown away by it.
My favorite brand is FAGE, pictured here. I like the "Total" and the "0 %" varieties. In a cup serving ( 2 cups per container) of the " 0%", which I currently have in the fridge, there's:

Calories- 120
Fat- 0g
Carbs- 9 g
Protein- 20 WHOMPING grams!

I've had protein mixes and protein bars that don't have as good a breakdown as this! With a consistency that's somewhere between sour cream and cool whip, plus all the live active cultures of good yogurt, this stuff is awesome. Try it!

Right at Ten Percent....

These pix were taken May 1st. By the calipers, I am realllll close to 10% body fat here.
The plan at this point became to raise my calories in order to put on some mass. Also, creatine loading. As you can see if you look closely, my genetic predisposition to store fat right in the lower front of my abs continues to foil my attempts at a six pack. Grrr......

Bodyshop Reccomendations: Flat Stomach ASAP

I'm going to start adding more reviews to this site of books and products that I reccommend, for those of you who are interested. This book, that I mentioned in my previous post on here, is by Dr. Darden ( my personal trainer and good friend), and was basically the "Textbook" for my entire transformation these past few months. Like I said, it's out of print now, but still available through a couple of outlets ( I grabbed this photo from Amazon, where I think it's available thru their partners).

Again, it covers EVERYTHING Darden had me do. From the weekly calorie variations (important to keep your body guessing, so it doesn't think it's in a starvation mode and will therefore keep burning fat), to SUPERhydration ( a GALLON of icecold water per day), to some beginning HIT workouts, and the philosophies and science behind all of it, everything is in here. If you too want to work out less, rest more, and get BETTER results, I can't reccommend this book highly enough.

HIT training Results

Each time Dr. Darden and I have taken photos ( an absolute MUST for keeping track of your real progress), we've repeated certain poses, so the photos were easier to compare. These are two of them: the first is basically relaxed, with hands on head, and the second is a double biceps pose.

There's a substantial loss of fat, as you can see, but what's really been interesting to me is that as I've lost weight, I actually look bigger, muscle-wise. I'm over twenty pounds different between the first and last in these photos. Yet I look bigger.

Maybe I've said this before, maybe I haven't, but I worked out with Dr. Darden just once a week. For a maximum of 30 minutes. These days, we work out for about twenty minutes. No cardio, ever. The reason for that is HIT training is so intense, you are breathing like a racehorse after the first one or two exercises. Cardio is uncecessary ( not to mention, when it comes to running and the like, often DANGEROUS to your joints, bones, and everything else).

Another key thing with our program was SUPERHYDRATION. As in a GALLON of ice cold water each and every day. Dr. Darden went over all of this and other aspects of this eating plan ( I don't say the word "diet" anymore) in detail in his book " Flat Stomach ASAP" that is now out of print but still available online, by the way. A gallon may seem like a lot to some people, but I've always been a heavy drinker. I guess I was just dehydrated was the reason why! I went to CVS pharmacy and found a handy 1/2 gallon jug and just filled it up twice a day. It's been a lot easier that way.

Over the years, I had done everything from starving myself, to low fat, to low carb dieting. Atkins, Zone, South Beach, I tried them all at various times. They ALL worked. For awhile. But it's funny, I realized that the only one that really worked for me was the starving thing. It's effects were the most dramatic, and lasted the longest. But I did NOT want to starve again ( that was back in my modeling days ), just because I don't like it (who does?) and I didn't want to lose muscle mass. What I did with Darden, though, along with the crazy intense HIT workouts once a week, was to greatly reduce my calorie intake and cycle it, to keep the body guessing. I learned that it's amazing how many calories we ingest every day in the Western World, and how we really don't need that many. All the studies on calories restriction show that it prolongs longevity and lifespan.

We started at 1500 calories for a week, them 1400, 1300, and 1200. Then 1400 again ( I lost a lot of my weight this week, when my body started thinking "Okay, I'm not starving... I can drop fat again"), 1300, and 1200. That dropped me to 12% BF, and 174 pounds, which was our original goal. We did another week at 1500 calories, just to see what would happen...

To be continued....

HIT training works....

Man, does it work! This is me on April 3rd.
This one was on March 16th (sorry they photos are out of order). So two months, almost to the day, of when I started with Darden. I went from right at 196lbs to 174 lbs. From 25% BF to 12%.
This one is on March 3rd again, and at about 11% BF, 170 lbs. At a certain percentage, the bodyfat loss starts slowing down of course, as there's less to lose. I'll try to get a big collage picture of all of my before and after shots up here for you all soon. Then we can really compare
them to see my results.

So it begins....

On January 16th of this year, I took the plunge. I went over to Dr. Ellington Darden's homegym, and began to transform myself. As you can see, I had some decent muscle mass already built over these past couple of years back in the gym, but there was a pesky, pervasive layer of fat covering it.
Yeah, as it so happened, a full 25% of my bodyweight, to be exact!!!! At 196 lbs., I was astonished I had this much fat. Dr. Darden, having worked with thousands of clients over the past thirty years, has an incredible amount of knowledge. He was able to tell me in a matter of seconds my weak points (my calves and gut), my strong points (chest and arms), and my potential. We talked about muscle lengths, and fat storage patterns (blue eyed people like myself carry fat around their abdomens, so getting a six pack is gonna be tough).

Possibly most interesting to me, though, was that he confirmed that I had indeed NOT wasted the last twenty plus years of my life! Let me explain...

A lifetime ago (or so it seems), I thought I wanted to be a professional bodybuilder. Mr. Olympia, to be exact. But in college I started modeling (had to lose whatever size I'd built), which led me to meeting my wife, and moving to Florida. Where I became a cartoonist, a husband, and a father. And bodybuilding became a distant memory. I still retained some muscle thickness from a good foundation laid early in life, but that was it. In the back of my mind, though, I always wondered " Could I have?", "Should I have?" about bodybuilding.

Dr. Darden was blunt... twenty years ago, I maybe could have won some arm or chest awards had I went pro (and took steroids). Those, remember, were my strong points. However, I have high calves (chicken legs) and the fat around the midsection would have given me a problem. So, genetically, I was not destined to be Mr. Olympia. Steroids can only do so much. SO...... I made the RIGHT decision! Thank God! Some people might have been crestfallen at his analysis of them, but to me, it was AWESOME. It's great to be able to find out that I didn't "miss my calling".
So, now, at 42, it's time to see how good I can become. What's the best ME I can be?

Dr. Ellington Darden

So, in reading the "New Bodybuilding for Old School Results", I was intrigued. Work out harder, work out briefer, and work out less... to someone who used to work out two hours in the morning before classes in college, and two hours after class, but now has a busy business and is a devoted family man, this sounded like a Godsend.

THEN, lo and behold, I found out that the author, Dr. Ellington Darden (shown in the video above), lives a few mere miles from my house!

Plus, he offered personal training. I hemmed and hawed a few months, and kept putting it off. Finally, I figured my way of working out hadn't really well, "worked out" that well for me, so I'd give Dr. Darden a call (plus my wife finally said it was okay!).

More to come...

The Biggest Loser!

After I turned 40, even though I was back in the gym and working out regularly, it just seemed that things got harder. I put back on some fat under the muscle I'd newly re-acquired, and couldn't seem to lose it. The same diet ( Low carb, high protein), the same workouts, just didn't seem to work the same way anymore. I was definitely in better shape than a lot of people, but I wasn't where I wanted to be. Then something weird happened... my cousin, Phillip Parham, and his wife, Amy, found out they were going to be on TV's "The Biggest Loser" ( a "reality" type weight loss show). I hadn't spoken to either of them in a few years (just too busy in our lives, I guess), but our family watched the show religiously because of them. I was soooo blown away over their dedication and the amazing results they had.

We watch a lot of reality shows in the Parham household, so we thought it would be cool, with the family connection especially, to go to the season finale of "The Biggest Loser" this time. (I'm holding the "I", my oldest daughter, Brady, is holding the "L", and my beautiful wife, Barbie, is holding the "&" in the photo here).

Phil and Amy didn't win the show (because of some gameplay), but they broke weight loss records on the show, and were extremely popular with viewers. They've gone on and have a successful business as personal trainers and motivational speakers now.
We got back from the show, and I knew I wanted to do something... something to take my training to the next level and get over the plateau I was stuck on. So I pulled a book from my shelf I'd recently bought.....

To be continued....

Just in Time....

Ya know, I never thought I'd look like this. I was quite the gymrat in my college days, modeled in major fashion mags in my midtwenties, and was in great shape. Somewhere along the line, though, working out became less of a priority.
I never got TOO far out of shape, I guess, but when I saw these photos from a family beach trip, I was horrified. One of my best buds, Tom Richmond (www.tomrichmond.com), the famous cartoonist, had gotten himself back into shape recently, and I was truly inspired by the changes he'd made in his physique (he's a BEAST!). So, with help and advice from him (it's important to have someone to bounce ideas off of... even if they live across the country), I decided to get back into shape. Vanity didn't hurt either... my 20 year high school reunion was about a year away at the time, and I wanted to look good for it . I got back into the gym, and it was really tough for awhile. I had to MAKE myself go.
But what do ya know? I eventually started LIKING the feeling of working out again. I got addicted to it, which is what I needed. And I did it JUST IN TIME for the reunion. I hit my weight goal (and got into the pants I wanted to wear) about two weeks before it. THIS photo is the same beach, about two years later (I was 40). I had made big changes already, but there was still more to come. (Notice the strategically placed baby! Ha! Right where abs SHOULD be! )

Weclome!

This is it! The first post. I know I'm supposed to say something witty here, but I really haven't come up with anything that fits the bill. Quite simply, this blog is about something that's become a big part of my life again, something that I missed for many years but didn't realize it - staying in shape. This blog is going to be about my quest for that- spirit, soul, and body.

The above photo is of my gym here at home that I've put together over the past couple of years. It's a work in progress. I affectionately call it my "Body Shop", hence the title of the blog. My Dad, you see, had a actual automotive body shop where he repaired and painted cars up until a few years ago ( "Marion's Body Shop ", in Greenville, SC), and the name of my gym is an homage to him and it. I was always too "artsy" (I'm a professional cartoonist by trade now) to be very interested in following in his footsteps in THAT kind of body shop. But, you see, I've now created my own version.

Hopefully you'll enjoy my musings and ramblings here, and maybe even get something out of it in the process.

Welcome to "Keelan's Body Shop"! Come on in!