Tuna Salad ALA LyonHart

You know, the hardest thing about a diet to me has always been missing things I'm used to and things I love. I've always gone off diets before because I craved the stuff I was keeping from myself, and when I went off I went off big. This time I've been more sucessful by instead of shunning everything, trying to find ways to enjoy things in a healthier manner. Some stuff like bacon cheeseburgers are notably off the list, sure, but there is plenty of good things out there to sub with. For example I love hot dogs on the weekend. It's easy to get fat free turkey hot dogs pretty much anywhere that taste great (the fat free beef hotdogs taste like a dead dog's dick, be warned) and a can of bushes vegetarian baked beans, or the store brand equivalant, which is fat free as well. These both do have a little too much sodium and sugars and such, so i stick to the weekend for those, but there is one compromise recipe that is so healthy I've worked it into my weekday regimen with delicious and satisfying results. I feel bad for you if you've read all this to this point and hate tunafish, cause I love it, and that is what my recipe is for, a satisfying tuna sandwich with almost no fat, and a near trivial number of calories that tastes great and wont leave you hungry. Without any further ado, Tuna Salad ALA LyonHart!



Now I know what you are saying "hey what was that again, you mumble mouthed prick?" well here is a quick recap in text form.

You need...

2 cans of chunk light tuna (or white, whatever racists...)
2 Tbsp of Pickle Relish
1/2 Tbsp of Dijon Mustard
1/2 Tbsp of Light Mayo (or full mayo, its so little it dont really matter)
1/2 cup of plain non-fat yogurt

You mix all that up real good, get everything nice and evenly distributed, put it in a tupperware, and you've got yourself 5 sammiches ready to roll for the week. Toss it on some whole grain bread (with no high fructose corn syrup, god dammit!) and enjoy.

Bad Knees and Fatness, two great tastes that taste great together!

I'm no athlete, I've never been. I'm strong, and I can put some power down when i need to, but I'm not a sports guy. I learned this as a child many times over. I got hit the face with a baseball playing right field, I would consistently run the wrong way playing soccer, and then while playing volleyball in gym class in seventh grade, I jumped, came down all sorts of weird, and blew out my knee.

I remember at the time no one believed me. I howled in pain and people around me were like "come on, man, get up!" as if they couldn't understand how anyone could get seriously hurt jumping up and down, but I did. After I spent some time in the nurses office trying to convince her I was actually injured and not just fucking around, she called my mother and we went to the doctor. The total damage was a torn MCL, and Torn meniscus. The MCL isn't all that big a deal, It's a ligament that runs down the outside of the knee, to keep it from slipping, with it torn basically I need to wear a brace when I'm doing lateral movement. It's the meniscus that's a bitch.

See that is the meniscus right there, that layer of cartilage between the top and bottom of the knee. Highlighted are the two sorts of tears you can get in the meniscus. Lucky me, I got both in various places. The bucket tears are however not that big a deal, they weaken the meniscus a little and can lead to arthritis, but the flap tears are the ones that suck hard. They are the reason I'm writing this post, and the excuse I'm going to use for not having lost any weight since my last weigh in.

See when a flap tear gets inflamed, like mine did a couple weeks back, it starts to move around in the joint, and gets caught in the joint as it opens and closes. That hurts... a lot... So over the last couple weeks I've been playing Russian roulette when i stand up with whether or not the meniscus flap would get jammed in my knee joint and walking would either be normal, or a painful disaster. There is no real way to stop it when it gets like this other than to move your knee around a lot and try and get it out of there.

So yeah, I'm still at 340, as of two days ago when I went to the doctor, and she gave me some anti-inflammatory for my knee. It feels good now, and this week I'll be getting back at it, so look for more posts to come. Hopefully this story makes you feel better about yourself if you have fully functional knees.

BJJ: You Had Me At BJ

During the 66th session of American Legion Jersey Boys State (a program I have been on staff for since attending myself in 1997), Ricardo Almeida, 3rd Degree BJJ Blackbelt under Renzo Gracie and UFC veteran, stopped by the Rider University campus to give a small seminar to about 30 lucky statesmen, a few state troopers and some staff. Over the course of two hours the attendees were put through basic calisthenics, a small but quick paced run that yours truly bailed on, and 90+ minutes of chokes, guards, sweeps and defenses. It was a wonderful experience for all involved and a great test case for making self-defense a larger part of the program. One can dare to dream it would be a sport in future years, but I think for now, the seminar at least will live on next session. Ricardo even promised to bring some additional BJJ studs with him next year. Frankie Edgar? Who knows?

In the interest of full disclosure I should say it was very cool meeting Ricardo as two of my college friends are students of his and owners of their own schools Brunswick BJJ and Ocean County BJJ respectively. BJJ was something I've always found myself interested in but talked myself out of as the self-defense credo of being pinned on the ground won out. Now that I'm out of shape and in my 30s, I'm more likely to call the police or hide in my car than face an attacker or unruly child. So I figured it couldn't hurt to give BJJ a shot for the sport aspect of it, or the mental. During my first seminar I learned that those moves you see on the UFC are a lot harder to perform than you would think. READ: Don't ever try to put a State Trooper in a Triangle choke.

While I'd love to commute to Ricardo's School in Hamilton, NJ, Haz's in East Brunswick or Tom Deblass's down the shore, that's just not realistic for a burgeoning family man with a leased SUV. So I searched bjj in Piscataway and found a gym a few miles from my house, MMA Combinations. I swung by tonight to give BJJ a shot, and I really liked it. The school is running a 6-week for $75 introductory offer, and I'm going to give it a shot. I could promise that I'll blog about my experiences there here, but realistically I'll just flake off again. Either way, I'll do my best.

As far as a 'Making Weight' update, I am currently down 22 lbs to 230. I expect to crack the 220s by the end of the Holiday weekend (and then to go back to the 230s after I eat at La Familia Pizzeria on the 5th with my Pregnant Wife). If you're keeping track at home I was 252 on 5/16 and am now 230 on 6/30. 22 lbs in 44 days (not too shabby). [(much better than The Lyonhart)]

Let's do a weekly weight check!

So it's been two weeks now, one with Lyon actually having a weight to work on, so let's see where the guys are...

you may remember Chris's first week weighin saw him shedding nearly 10 pounds and checking in at a svlete-ish 244 lbs. Let's see how he's ringing up today!

239 puts him another 5 down, and under the 240 mark! that leaves him 34 pounds from his goal of 205! Fuck him! I don't understand how two people of reasonably similar ethnic background have such different abilities to gain and lose weight.

I say that because as you may recall i had my first weigh in last week due to me being too heavy for people scales. I weighed in at 345 a week ago and today this is what I'm looking at...

If it's too small for you to read, I'll save you the trouble, it's 340. So that's a measly 5 pounds. Considering I have DOUBLE the weight to lose and am losing it at HALF the rate, I think Chris has this situation pretty locked down... maybe I'll convince him to go middle weight... He would'nt look TOO freaky at 185...

Let's do our second weigh-in!

So it's been a little more than a week since we first weighed in, Chris weighing in at 252 and the Big Cat crushing the scale's very ego and coming out with less information then he went in with. Well the LyonHart has come back with a brand new scale sure to calculate his girth, and Chris will keep using his puny mortal scale, so let's check in with the guy's numbers!

The LyonHart hits the gym HARD! (hardness graded on a curve)

Thought I'd show you guys what I'm starting off doing at the gym. It doesn't look like much but it kills me, and that is very telling

Why I Fight (Obesity)

I can no longer deny that I need to do something about my weight. At 252 lbs, I am now the fattest I have ever been. Less than a year ago, on the day of my wedding, I was 215 lbs. Three months later, I competed in and completed a sprint triathlon at 225 lbs, thanks to a 10lb weight gain on a Honeymoon Cruise. I actually smoked two cigarettes after finishing the triathlon as well. I quit smoking in October and in the ensuing 7 months, I gained more weight than some pregnancies. As you saw in the Kickoff video, I have the physical appearance of a woman in her 4th trimester. I quit drinking in Early February so it can no longer be called a beer belly. It's mostly laziness and eating my feelings.

Since weighing in earlier this week I have exercised exactly 0 times. I have eaten fast food once a day, and I have still lost about 5lbs. Mostly thanks to a 3-day vomit/diarrheal festival hosted in my home. The purging has stopped, thankfully, but we'll see if I can build off the unfortunate weight loss or not. I've recently started taking Lexapro, so I'm hoping I don't draw the 'disproportionate weight gain- side effect card'.

I wish I could say that the Lexapro was "to keep me from killing all y'all", but in reality Daddy is just a worrier. As my work schedule eases up, I should have more time to go to the gym, and I believe the Lyonhart has some especially "interesting" workouts lined up for us on our road to Fighting Shape. Perhaps for my next entry, I'll blow the dust off the perfect-pushup handles in my basement.

I am the LyonHart, hear me wheeze!

I suppose I owe you guys an introduction to myself, and why I thought of this blog in the first place. I'm what you'd call an "adult onset obesity" sufferer. I was like any other kid, skinny as a rail, running around, playing soccer then baseball, basketball, and basically just running around alot. Then I fell in love with computers as I crossed double digits and stopped moving entirely, while not stopping my love for burgers and sugary sodas. Cut  ahead a couple decades and here I am, 30 and, as can be seen in the previous post, too fat to be measured on normal human scales.

I got into MMA through professional wrestling. I was always a wrestling fan as a kid, and still am to this day. At a certain point as MMA was gathering steam they started to cross promote and I realized MMA was not as confined and ultimately silly as boxing, and was not as fanciful and form based as traditional martial arts competitions. It was real wrestling mixed with kick boxing, boxing, and something new to me called Jiu Jitsu. Before long I was watching more MMA than wrestling on a weekly basis, then there was a blending of worlds...

This is Brock Lesnar, at one time my favorite Wrestler in the WWE, and currently one of my favorite fighters in MMA. I know, you're thinking "Who wouldn't be enamored with that guy, he's clearly a people person" but I had a kinship with him from the first time he appeared on WWE television. See, when he came to the ring for his first match, the ring annoucer called out "Standing 6 foot 1 inch tall, weighing in at 295 pounds, Brock Lesnaarrrrr!"

That's when a switch went off in my mind, way back then. I thought to myself hey... I'm 6 foot 1 inch tall, and I weigh 295 pounds... yet, I seem to wear it quite differently. From that day I've always look at Brock as sort of a divergent universe version of me. If my life had taken a very different path, I could be that guy. Not taking into genetics, I understand it's a very simplistic view of the situation. However, when I started my weight loss regimen, I thought of MMA again. Brock still walks around at about 300 pounds, and has to cut his weight down to 265 for every fight. Me on the otherhand, no longer walk around at about 300 pounds, somewhere closer to 350 pounds, and as soon as I get my big fat people scale in the mail I'll give you an exact number. Still, I thought if Brock can get down to 265 for each fight, I can down to 265 in the span of 6 months. 

After all, I like being a big guy, but if you are too heavy to be a heavyweight, then you've crossed the line.

THE KICK OFF!

It's the Beginning of the Journey! In just six short months on November 16th, we'll either be in our weight classes or very very far out of them, all we know at this point is we are starting off bad... or are we? This weigh in on last night's WayTooHip Radio show (www.waytoohip.com) was to show our starting point's however my weigh in didn't go as planned.

As you can see I'm going to need a better scale, I've ordered off ebay that claims to measure accurately up to 396 pounds, so hopefully that is more than enough, cause if that thing errors on me I'm going to toss myself down the widest elevator shaft I can find.

Anyway guys check back and subscribe! We'll be posting humorous, inspiring and most likely embarassing stories, pics and videos as we progress in our journey to make weight! We have not yet begun to fight! Literally...