10 Ways to Get Fit Now

Rule #1: Fight Apathy

The last place I worked had a gym. It was right next my office. It was a decent-sized room with equipment not unlike those at a Holiday Inn. And I made use of it three or for times a week for an hour. The problem is, in that hour, that I did the bare minimum: a 20-minute jog on the treadmill with my eyes fixed on the wall-mounted TV, some bicep curls and pushups, and plenty of email breaks. There was no one there to tell me to run faster, choose a heavier weight, or threaten to drop my phone in the water cooler if I didn’t turn it off. I wanted to pick up a barbell but didn’t know what to do with it, so I played it safe. It kept me in shape, but limited. And it kept me bored.



I found out about CrossFit about two years ago when a reporter friend wrote about a new Toronto gym that specialized in it. It was still relatively unknown at the time. “CrossFit combines gymnastics, track and field, Olympic weightlifting and a number of other disciplines in an effort to develop functional fitness,” she wrote, adding that under the supervision of a coach, the intense eight-minute workout had her jumping on boxes, throwing weighted balls, skipping, and doing burpees and pull-ups. She was sore the next day. I hadn’t felt sore in what felt like years. Perfect.



CrossFit uses high-intensity interval training exercises to work multiple muscle groups for the most “efficient” workout in a short time (rather than, say, calves on Wednesday and biceps on Thursday). It promised the most bang for my time-crunched buck, so I was willing to overlook CrossFit’s cult-like reputation. Combine the testosterone of MMA fighting, the rah-rah spirit of a USO tour, and substitute yoga’s religious-like devotion to juice cleanses for paleo brownies, you have CrossFit in a nutshell.



Rule #2: Leggo Your Ego

I signed up for foundation classes where beginners like me could learn basic Olympic lifts and other hallmark Crossfit moves like pull-ups and back squats. There would always be that guy (and it’s always a guy) whose eyes would lift more than his body could. Don’t be that guy. I was that guy.



Embarrassed that I wasn’t lifting as much as the others, I stupidly added plates to the barbell without any first learning how to do the lift properly with a manageable weight. Jordan, the coach who previously gave my reporter friend eight minutes of hell, intervened before I seriously hurt myself, saying he’d rather see me do a perfect snatch (an Olympic lift where with a wide grip the bar is lifted from the ground to overhead in one continuous move) with an empty barbell than haul an extra 50 pounds with bent arms and an overarched back.

Rule #9: Use What You Have

It’s a testament to how sedentary our lives have become when we now need specialized gyms and equipment to keep us in shape. While CrossFit is synonymous with barbells, pull-up rigs, and comically large tractor tires, I learned that many of its exercises require no equipment—so I could do them anywhere, whether it’s in a hotel room or in my living room. Pushups, burpees, one-legged squats, planks, sit-ups, squat jumps; when I’m traveling I’d do as many reps of each of these moves within a minute as possible for five rounds.



Rule #10: Set (Realistic) Goals



My original target was to simply exercise enough to burn off all the butter-fried meat I was eating and not be bored. OK, and maybe build some muscle to fill out my t-shirts better. I made goals, but with the help from the trainers at my gym, I focused on small achievable ones that could be met within a short time (hold a plank position for an extra 10 seconds, shave a few seconds off a kilometer run) to propel me to the next goal.



Despite claims on heath magazine covers, I knew I would never get the body of Hugh Jackman (unless my job also relied on having an eight-pack), nor would I ever be sent to California to compete in the annual CrossFit Games. There’s ambition and then there’s delusion. I dead lifted 400lbs a few months ago, so I’ll try for an extra five pounds next time. For a guy whose job it is to gorge, I’ve never felt in better shape.

Rule #5: Small Steps

After two years of doing CrossFit I knew what my 140lb, 5’5 frame excelled at: back squats, pull-ups, dead lifts; exercises that benefited from having low bodyweight and centre of gravity. I could back squat 375lbs and crank out 30 pull-ups in less than a minute. On the other hand, my short frame made it hard for me to row with much stamina. And I looked like a child throwing a 20lb medicine ball to hit a 10-foot high target.



Having spent years hunched over a desk also made overhead squats—a move where you hold the barbell overhead in a wide grip and squat down—impossible in the beginning. My shoulders couldn’t rotate out enough to hold the bar up. It hurt to just hold a two-pound PVC pipe in that position. But rather than avoiding that lift as much as I could, I did one-on-one weekly sessions with a coach. We worked on my flexibility, balance and body position to fine tune all the elements required to do a proper, pain-free overhead squat. I felt uncoordinated and weak at those sessions, but that’s why I had signed up for Crossfit in the first place. I never felt weak when I was cruising through my rounds at my gym, but I wasn’t getting stronger, either. Now I can overhead squat 165lbs.



Rule #6: Prioritize Your Meals

There are times when I’d be on such a roll with work that I’d put off eating lunch. Before I know it, it’s 4pm., I missed lunch service at the restaurant I was supposed to check out, I’m starving, and so I make a beeline for the food court stall with the biggest, greasiest portions. In turn, I ruin my appetite for dinner and am unable to sleep because my stomach is now growling again. Same goes for working out. My office gym was open all day so I never had a sense of urgency. I could afford working at my desk for another two hours, but then I’d be so tired the last thing I wanted to do was go to the gym. This would happen for weeks at a time.



In retrospect, it’s crazy that I’d rather starve myself than step away from the computer for an hour. Is my well being less important than work? Of course not. Now on my daily to-do list, I write down lunch and snack breaks alongside meetings, assignment deadlines, and gym times. By treating my meals (and workouts) as just as important as sitting down with editors, I’m less likely to skip them. Eating on a schedule sounds odd, but creating healthy habits like this is one of the most important tools for getting in shape.

Rule #3: Take Back Your Kitchen

I was eating out four, five times a week. When I had to write about Toronto’s ramen boom, I could feel my veins swelling from all the extra sodium I was consuming. The pork belly trend was also at its peak so all the menus had some iteration of it that I had to try (bacon gets web traffic; a whole wheat wrap with sensible calorie and sodium levels, gets nothing). It’s not that my eating was counteracting my workouts exactly, but my mind felt foggy and my energy was down. A line had to be drawn.



Mondays and weekends became sacred. Like how the religiously inclined don’t work on the Sabbath, on those days I wouldn’t eat out. I would actually make my own meals. I bought vegetables at the farmer’s market, ate leaner meats like chicken and fish, and through watching chefs cook in the kitchen, discovered the wonderful world of herbs and spices, like rosemary and cayenne, which added plenty of fat-free flavour. During the rest of the week my meals were dictated by food trends, but at home I controlled the portion sizes and ensured each meal had the right balance of protein, carbs and vegetables to keep me from going on a hunger rampage. It is nearly impossible to not cook healthier than pretty much any meal you order out. The other upshot was that I was that I was vastly improving my kitchen skills, which in turn made me a more knowledgable food writer.



Rule #4: Taste The Rainbow



Just as CrossFit got me doing new exercises, my fridge began to fill with new and unfamiliar ingredients as I became more confident in the kitchen. Collards? It’s a bitter leafy green with a tough stem like kale. So I treated them as such: Tore the leaves, sautéed them in a bit of oil and a few pancetta cubes to temper the bitterness and soften the texture, added salt and chili flakes. Delicious. I bought more colourful produce: blueberries, deep green rapini, yellow squash and red peppers. It just so happens that the most colourful fruits and vegetables are the ones packed with the most nutrients. No need to obsess over the latest super-fruit to come out of the Amazon rainforest; the good stuff was already right under my nose.



Eat This, Not That: But Also Bacon



The truth is, unless you’re doing one of those masochistic cleanses (which, hey, why are you doing that?), most diets don’t have a solid ‘never eat again’ or ‘only eat this’ approach anymore. They’ve all adopted an ‘almost anything in moderation’ approach, with a growing emphasis on including healthy fats, and, thankfully, not cutting carbs altogether. Still, there’s one basic rule that ties them all together: bacon. Count them: South Beach Diet, The Zone Diet, Paleo Diet, Atkins Diet and Mediterranean Diet.

Rule #7: Chart Your (And Others’) Progress

One of the reasons I never got a good workout back at that office gym because no one was there to set the pace, inspire me to lift heavier, or encourage me to push harder. Hell, no one noticed when I hadn’t gone to that gym in three months. At my current gym where workouts are structured in classes, I made friends with the regulars and we cheered each other on during workouts, made friendly bets on who could do more reps, commiserated over being sore from yesterday’s workout, and tried to keep pace with each other during runs. If someone achieved a milestone, whether it’s doing their first pull-up or lifting five more pounds than before, we congratulated them like proud parents.



Rule #8: Keep Going

This past summer the magazine I worked at folded. I was out of a job and went through a week of wallowing—and accepting free meals from sympathetic friends. I was distraught, my world was in turmoil, but I kept going to the gym, where the familiar routine and structure helped me through the worst of my slump.