Why I’m Eating Nerds Candy After Every Workout

Almost everyone who exercises knows about the importance of consuming protein immediately following a workout. The Whey Protein shaker-cup has become a standard for gym-goers everywhere. But, and I mean a big but, many neglect the need for also consuming carbohydrates immediately following a workout. 

This is partially because “carbs are bad,” right? In fact, the C word, “carbs,” has become a curse word for anyone who wants to be lean.

While avoiding carbs is a valid nutrition strategy, I argue here that the one time when carbs are not only acceptable but actually necessary, is immediately following weight training. These carbs must be fast digesting and will serve to replenish key nutrients needed for muscle recovery and growth.

A few weeks ago, I was reminded by my good friend Joe about an old bodybuilding nutrition trick that I had learned from some trainers at Gold’s Gym about six years ago. These meatheads (yes, the nicest guys in the world, but still very meaty) would eat four Oreos immediately after each workout. The trick, according to them, was “intended to spike their insulin and increase blood flow to help muscle growth.” I didn’t understand the science, but it was a great excuse for me to slam some Oreos each day. Without any research or validation of their claims, I developed a post-workout sweet-tooth.

This habit only lasted a few months, but I don’t think it is only coincidence that during that time I was at the lowest body fat percentage I have been at during my adult life. Sure I had many other lifestyle habits that contributed to this, but I couldn’t help but wonder, maybe they were onto something? Then, as I became less interested in bench pressing 300 lbs. and more interested in not-looking-awkward in a suit, I slowly stopped some of these bodybuilding habits I once had. Then, over time, I completely forgot about this “trick” until a little over a month ago when Joe, who has very low body fat, told me that he eats Nerds candy after each weight training workout. I was shocked. Joe didn’t look awkward in a suit, and wasn’t a meathead, but rather, had a proven track record of fitness and nutrition.

This excited me, and as I do with most things, I went all in on it right away, buying a couple boxes of Nerds that week, and starting to consistently eat them after each workout.

Unfortunately, however, this brought a lot of attention from my fellow gym members in the locker room. I received stares and puzzled looks of why is this guy eating candy after his workout? Does he have a problem? Does he not understand fitness?! And also the one guy who flat out asked: “what the heck are you doing?”

Yet, while I believed this nutrition trick does truly work, when I tried to explain it to others I sounded like a completely uninformed buffoon. So, in an effort to explain to others (and myself), I began researching. Below is, in Layman’s terms, what I found. Most of the information was detailed in Bodybuilding.com’s article The Benefits of Post Workout Carbohydrates, but there are also other blogs, forums, and articles supporting the original opinion on Bodybuilding.com.

Here it goes:

1. When you weight train, your body uses muscle glycogen as its main fuel source, burning up that fuel and using its stores. Glycogen is the storage form of carbohydrates. Thus, your body is burning up carbohydrates, which are needed for muscle tissue restoration.
2. Immediately after a workout, your muscles are starving for replenished glycogen/carbs to begin the muscle tissue rebuilding process.
3. Feeding your muscles fast-dissolving carbohydrates, such as glucose, promotes glycogen synthesis. Glucose is a type of sugar and here “synthesis” means when a simple material (like glucose) is used to produce a more complex chemical compound. In other words, what you eat or drink is being put to work on your cells by transforming into the right form.
4. The claim is, if glycogen synthesis and protein synthesis takes place immediately following a workout, then the body’s levels of growth hormone and insulin will naturally go up, which leads to muscle growth. (There are some good arguments that “spiked insulin” after weight training will promote muscle growth. Read more HERE.)
5. One of the best forms of pure glucose is a sugar form called dextrose, which is found in Nerds.
6. Thus, eating Nerds replenishes valuable glycogen stores needed to get stronger, faster, and leaner.

Those are the basics. I hope that made sense and I hope that I have convinced you to be weird like me (and Joe) and eat candy in the locker room. If I haven’t, that’s OK, I am still figuring this out myself. In fact, I am admittedly still seeking answers to the following questions below. Along with telling you what I know, I’ll also tell you what I don’t know.

What is the exact time window to replenish glycogen? I try for 20-30 minutes (maximum) after a workout, but really don’t know the perfect timing.

What is the exact serving size necessary? I pour approximately 2-3 tsp in the palm of my hand. That is not science. I wish I knew the proper amount.

Are there other ways to obtain the same effects without eating sugary candy? I think so. If you don’t like Nerds, you can otherwise ensure that you are eating foods high in dextrose. That should do the trick. Other options include, but are not limited to Smarties, Gatorade powder mix, some fruits such as apricots, tangerines, grapefruit and banana, cherries, plums, blueberries. Are there other options? Probably.

Can this work for anyone and everyone? Or do certain body types, fitness levels, genetic types, etc. react differently? I haven’t explored this yet. Considering our bodies are all different, I am sure this will not work for everyone.

Does this really work? So far in the last few months, I have dropped 3% body fat, so it is looking that way. However, I have not isolated this one change in order to use it as a test sample so I cannot give Nerds all the credit for this. 

Do your own research. Eat some candy. What’s the worst that could happen?

Fit for Gratitude

In recent months I have become more aware of how important gratitude is in my life, mostly because of its unique power to dramatically affect my level of happiness.

I started thinking more about happiness when I found Shawn Achor. Thanks to his studies at Harvard, and his book The Happiness Advantage, I’ve been focusing more on practices and habits that are designed specifically to produce happiness, rather than those of the converse effect. One example of this is my choice to stop reading the news for a few months. Between Trump & Hillary, police officers shooting civilians (and visa versa), and all of the other “bad news,” I had to realize that the news was draining my happiness each day and, like gravity, it was pulling the corners of my mouth down. Maybe it doesn’t do that to you, but it does to me. (link: Shawn Achor TED Talk)

I definitely do not promote being aloof or naive about what is going on in the world. Quite the opposite. Undoubtedly, individuals who understand the world, current events, and politics are more likely to be wiser, better citizens and consumers, and more responsible in general. In fact, I could argue that we have a social responsibility to be aware of what is happening in the world.

However, it is critical to know what is the right dose of news to consume. Too little and you live under a rock. Too much and you will be unhappy. Thomas Jefferson said, “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” Don’t believe the claim that consuming news leads to less happiness? Read Shawn Achor’s book and case studies. For me, I had to go cold turkey (zero news) and take my happiness back. 

In addition, there are other habits I am working on. The one that seems bulletproof, so far, is expressing gratitude during bad times. I believe that there is no trick, habit, or action we can take that empowers the mind to feel happy more than the act of expressing gratitude during hardship. It is in bad times when gratitude is most important.

Here are some mantras I’ve been teaching myself:

When you are afraid, be grateful.
When you have anxiety, be grateful.
When you are angry, be grateful. 

You might ask yourself, how can I possibly be grateful during those times? Brother David Steindl-Rast said, “In daily life, we must see it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.” Thus, we have power over our emotions and one way of controlling them is through the vantage of gratefulness. (Link: Brother David TED Talk)

The truth is, it is impossible to experience feelings of fear, anger, and anxiety while exhibiting thankfulness and gratitude. The two emotions, negativity and gratitude are antithetical. As author and public speaker Tony Robbins says, “The antidote to fear is gratitude. The antidote to anger is gratitude. You can’t feel fear or anger while feeling gratitude at the same time.” It’s a phenomenon!

At first, I began applying this to the basics of life, work, relationships, finances, etc. But then, I even began thinking, how can I apply this to health and fitness? As odd as it sounds, I took up gratitude during weight training and endurance training… For example, on the last couple of reps squatting or deadlifting, I think about how thankful I am for something like my breath, my wife, my home, the trees, wind, or friends with great senses of humor. Whatever comes to mind. And, on my last set of sprints or box jumps, I say a “thanks” for my family, safety, opportunity, the sun, good coworkers, or even clean water. What I have found is that expressing gratitude at a moment of physical anguish and exhaustion has given me extra energy and helped me to burst through and find a repository of strength and endurance that I may not have otherwise found. Now I am waiting for Sports Science to do an episode on this.

Maybe you won’t find yourself deadlifting and thanking God for the clouds, but my point is that true gratitude has the power to change your psychology and your physiology. Gratitude has changed my mind and my body. It can change yours too if you will practice it.

Melody Beattie, a fellow St. Paul native, said, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.” (Side note: Melody went to the same high school as my mom. I had to include her here!)

Gratitude will not only change your mood from unhappy to happy, but it will change you.

What could gratitude turn you into? What are you thankful for?

How to Switch From Being a Coffee Drinker to Being a Tea Drinker

You might be asking why do I care about drinking less coffee and drinking more tea? It started a few weeks ago when my caffeine intake caught up with me. Not just physically, but the black liquid gold I love so much also started messing with my moral compass. I had been riding on a mid-morning high from my Starbucks venti Blonde Roast coffee (with a shot of espresso) when, all of the sudden, like a skyscraper falling from a C4 demolition, I came crashing down hard.

The truth is, I needed coffee. Like a toddler needs a toy in the toy store, kicking, screaming, and crying until his mother gives in, I needed coffee. If you caught me with low caffeine levels in the first half of the day you would have found a mix between Hulk, Scrooge and a sloth. I was impatient, irritable, and tired. All because of a chemical that I needed. Here lies the moral compass problem. I don’t want to need coffee (let alone any substance) to function. Sure, it’s not like coffee is heroin or crystal meth, but it still seems wrong to be a slave to something besides the bare minimum elements of survival (oxygen, water, food). 

Some people, when deprived of food, get “hangry,” (hungry/angry). I’ve been hangry many times, but now I was getting “thangry” (thirsty for coffee / angry).

On an average day I was consuming about 350 mg of caffeine. This is two large cups of coffee between 7-10am and then some form of espresso (latte, Americano, triple-espresso, etc.) after lunch, around 2-3pm. Needless to say, it took a few thangry spouts to realize that this caffeine intake needed to be taken down a notch. Maybe that’s not a lot of caffeine for some people, but for me, it was enough to crash and become a thangry Hulk/Scrooge/sloth.

In addition to my dismay for the grotesque amount of caffeine I was consuming, I was also getting more unhappy with the way coffee’s acidic qualities continued to wreck my stomach and leave me with daily gut rot. (Article link below for more on this). 

OK, here it is, how to drink less coffee. I’ve given away the trick, which is substituting coffee for tea. But it is more complex than you think so don’t stop reading yet. In fact, we had to hire NASA scientists and test this theory on lab rats for ten years before we could publish this. (Are you asking who is “we?” Good question. It’s just me, Chris, but “we” sounds much more scientific.)

Bring in the Baby Steps:

Step #1 Start substituting coffee for tea, one at a time.
(Start by substituting just one of your coffee servings each day for a tea serving, and then progress from there as desired. I know you’ll miss that delicious Columbian roast with a splash of half & half, but trust me, you’ll be OK for one serving a day.)

Step #2 Learn how to like tea. Or if you can’t learn, pretend.
(Face it. Tea will never taste as good as a delicious hot cup of java, so get over it and start appreciating tea for what it is. And, for anyone who actually likes the taste of tea more than coffee, you’re dead to me. Or you are a liar, and may God bless your soul.)

Step #3 Get the right equipment to make tea more convenient.
(Coffee is, for the most part, convenient to make and to take with you in transit. Brew and toss it in a mug and go. Tea, not so much. The bags with those weak strings that break; and the right temperature water; and the open-top mug of scalding water sloshing around while dipping the bag while driving… It all just sounds like a real hassle if you ask me. That’s why you need the right equipment to easily brew tea and make it mobile and convenient.)

I’ll revisit step #2 now because I am sure there are some tea fanatics that are now very upset at this opinion. It’s not that I hate tea, it’s just that the taste of coffee and espresso is superior to the lesser tea leaf. I’m fine with the taste because I know it’s health benefits (article below). In fact, we humans will pretend to like almost anything if it’s good for us. What I mean is, let’s be honest, who really likes canned tuna, cooked spinach, or Brussel sprouts? These are all terrible tasting foods that we eat because of purely their nutritional value. The answer is, “almost nobody actually likes those weird foods,” yet we eat them anyway – because we know they are healthy. My point is, if, instead of having health benefits, you discovered that canned tuna, cooked spinach, and Brussel sprouts were actually NOT healthy, would you ever eat them again? Of course not! However, you already know that double stuff Oreos, caramel fudge, and potato chips are terribly unhealthy, yet you do decide to eat those. Thus, you are eating these “healthy” foods purely because they are “healthy” and not because you actually enjoy the flavor. 

Booya, tea snobs!

Oh right, back to tea… I’ve always avoided tea because of the inconvenience. Dipping the tea bag in a hot open mug while driving in rush hour traffic is not a way to start my morning. So finally, the moment I needed: a few weeks ago a friend at work recommended to me “Chris, if you ever want to get your ‘tea game strong,’ then you need to try this awesome mug…”

And now, here to guide you through Baby Step #3, I introduce to you… Drum roll please… The Sei Sei Tenchi Bottle! (link below)

Sei Sei Co is a genius company that has made my tea consumption convenient and tasty. Simply drop your tea leaves in the small canister inside, take the mug with you anywhere, pour hot or cold water into the mug when you are ready to drink, cover and let steep, and wah-lah, you have a travel tea mug.

Since buying the Tenchi bottle I have reduced my caffeine intake to one coffee per day! I do still drink my coffee and MCT oil around 7 am, but have slowly weened off the mid-morning and afternoon cups which were becoming more of a liability than an aid. The tea comes in around 2-3pm when I am needing a small pick-me-up, and I end up with only about 100mg, or less, of caffeine per day. 

My Sei Sei mug is my new best friend. And I am on my way to “tea game strong.” 

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Click here to check out the Sei Sei Tenchi bottle: http://www.seiseico.com/#!product-page/c2z9/b136f58a-6e0c-d4b5-020c-63ad22e6fe40

Click here for some health benefits on tea: http://www.webmd.com/diet/tea-types-and-their-health-benefits

Click here for more on the acidity of coffee: http://teeccino.com/images/uploads/pages/File/gitract.pdf

Why I Quit Facebook

It was a Friday night, and I sat in an apartment loft in the city. I was seated comfortably at the end of a couch with four of my closest friends surrounding me. Some of us hadn’t seen each other in months. It was an exciting time to catch up and have some fun.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket because I thought I felt a vibrate. Blank screen. False alarm. However, without even thinking, my finger spontaneously started tapping the screen, as if to say, Well, while I have it out, why not check Facebook quick. I stared down at my Facebook newsfeed. Nothing interesting, but I kept exploring with the flick of a finger. Flick. Flick. Tap. Flick. Tap. Flick.

When I finally stopped to come up for air, I noticed my four friends – all eyes down on their screens flipping and tapping and flicking and clicking. All on Facebook.

Social media is imperially designed to connect people, yet here it was dividing them.

As I became more attuned, I noted literally hundreds of other incidents like this happen, mostly as I looked in the mirror. In self-reflection, I saw a Dorian Gray figure, crumbling inside, losing brain cells, and wasting life away while staring at a screen. Yet, if you were to visit my pages on my Facebook and Twitter, my life looked amazing! And because I didn’t have Instragram, you could visit my wife’s (then girlfriend) Instagram, and see me: a sporty, clean, smiley husband. Amazing.

Facebook wasn’t always this consuming, but it became so when it implemented the newsfeed, a home page system designed to bring your closest connections even closer. And in addition to your daily news, now you can catch up on your family and friends’ lives as news also. Channel 5 at 5:00 was replaced by the newsfeed… “What’s happening in the world right now?” became an easy question to feed on. And feed and feed and feed. Newsfeed.

Yet, despite the technical genius and wonderful innovative spirit of this change, many users used it to take their vanity to a new level, realizing that their posts would become “headlines” to the world on this feed. Posts ranged from genius and witty to beautiful (or photoshopped), to political and social heresy, and beyond. People realized they could feel important with their status or a picture of their meal or exercise motivation or complaints. It would all show up in the “daily news” for all to see. Look at me, look at me!

I first observed this when I was at an event after college graduation where a group of girls were clearly not having fun. It was hot, we were waiting in a long line, and everyone was impatient. Yet the girls put together the most impressive photoshoot I had ever seen, and the next day, when I ran into a friend of mine, he said, “Hey, I saw the pictures of last night. Looked like a blast!” Little did he know, those girls were actually miserable, and definitely not having a blast during the time of the time of the photos.

This was eye opening to me. It wasn’t about “how much fun can we have at a social gathering?” anymore. Instead, it had become about “how fun I can make this event look on social media?”

The newsfeed was icing on the cake for me. I started feeling that I was living in this alternative reality where I constantly, out of habit, pulled out my iPhone to gain information on the world. Information I didn’t need or even care about. What I found was usually quite thrilling…The cereal my third cousin ate for breakfast, Someone from my fifth-grade class complaining about the weather. Someone else who I didn’t even know posting a new all-time high in Candy Crush. I consumed it all. 

To Summarize, I had to get rid of Facebook, and other social media, because it was filling a space in my time and in my mind. I was sacrificing many things: creative thinking, learning, listening, real friendship, being in-the-moment, humility, blood pressure, quiet-time, and many other things. In addition, I saw these effects in others around me as well. The newsfeed was just an ancillary effect of a broader problem. That problem being that modern-day, first-world humans struggle to be in the moment and to unplug from information. It’s a fact. Google it.

Fours years later… It’s been a quite a long time without Facebook and Twitter. At times I’ve even logged in and created new usernames just to see if I’d feel differently. Those episodes usually last less than 24 hours each time. I even tried Snapchat for about 3 hours. That reaffirmed everything for me. No thank you.

A Case for Cold Showers

“It takes 21 days to make a habit” is one of the most common phrases we hear. But how long does it take to make a new mindset, something beyond a habit, but instead, a whole new way of thinking? How long does that take?

In the first 21 seconds of my first ever intentional cold shower, I had created a new mindset. 

It took 21 seconds.

Why did I do it? Why did I take a freezing cold shower in the first place? I wasn’t sure at the time, and I continued to ask myself that, along with some other questions. Most I had answers to, except one, how long can I keep this up?

The internal dialogue went something like this:

“Why am I doing this?” — because it will make me better, I think.

“How will it make me better?” — it will teach me discipline, I hope.

“How will it teach discipline?” — I’m enduring discomfort on purpose, and in doing so, I am in control of my self-will and not subject to my desires.

“Why does having self-discipline matter?” — because if I can’t discipline my self-will to endure a few minutes of physical, non-harmful discomfort, how can I endure progressive, life-improving discomfort and become the best version of me I can be? How can I resist laziness, fear of failure, and taking the “easy road?”

The last question I asked myself was “how long can I keep this up?” I didn’t know the answer to that one….

But for 21 days I have been taking the coldest showers possible. If the shower knob can go colder, I’ll give it a slight touch that direction. 

21 days without a drop of warm water on my body.

I’ll admit, the first couple of times I did this there was a certain meditative component. I felt I was “harnessing my inner Chi,” even though I have no idea what that really means, and don’t prescribe to any philosophy of the sort. But, much like we do on a treadmill: rather than stopping at .98 miles or 2.95 miles, we push through to the full mile-marker, not always because we believe that the extra distance will change our physical stature, but because we find an extreme self-gratification in successfully enduring hardship simply for the sake of mastering our self-weakness and desire to take the “easy road.”

You might wonder: after crossing the 21-day mark, is taking cold showers a habit now? I don’t know. But I do know this:

1. On many days, it’s the hardest part of my day (everything else seems so easy after).
2. I still crave a hot steamy shower and I still have to dominate my self-desire for comfort every single day.
3. I feel more in control of my life and I am slowly learning to put laziness, fear of failure/discomfort, and taking the “easy road” to death in my life.

Since I started the cold showers 21 days ago I have also practiced a higher level of self-discipline by: meticulously sticking to my exercise plan, eating healthy and resisting sweets & treats, limiting my caffeine intake (which was far too high), making my bed in the morning, reading diligently, improving my posture and eye contact with others, stretching regularly, and in many other ways.

I guess you could say I’ve formed a habit in 21 days. A habit of elevating. A habit of self-discipline. A habit of controlling my human desire for having everything the easy and comfortable way. A habit of killing off “Lazy Chris.”

A habit of freezing cold showers…

Silly?

I know. That’s half the fun.