The Uncle Sam Blog

Meditation 101

theunclesam4@gmail.com (Sam Leszczynski) — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 15:51:32 GMT

‘Sup nerds.

Introducing the mystical, very confusing, and often-taught-wrong practice of meditation.

Can I get an “oooaaammmYeAAhh?”

First things first: meditation is an ACTIVE practice. NOT a PASSIVE one.

The goal is not to sit crosslegged, eyes closed, fingers pressed in hippie-crystal-girl style, chanting “oam” and thinking about nothing,

Meditation is merely the active pracitice of becoming AWARE of what you are thinking in your mind, what you are feeling in your body, and of any emotions that come up. It honestly has nothing to do with how you position yourself as you can meditate laying down, sitting, standing, walking, fucking, eating, or when shaving your balls. (it’s most easily practiced and learned while still and with closed eyes, but I digress)

Major learning point: YOU are NOT your THOUGHTS.

Meaning: the thoughts you think everyday are not YOURS. They are a combination of your experience mingling with a stream of consciousness.

When engaged in meditation, the goal is to create separation from the thoughts currently in your head and this “thing” that is “you” that “observes” these thoughts. Heady I know, but stay with me. Here’s how this may manifest:

*The scene is you sitting still with eyes closed. It’s your first time trying meditation.*

After you initially close your eyes, you immediately think, “Well this is dumb. I feel foolish right now.”

Meditation is becoming AWARE that you just had the thought, “Well this is dumb. I feel foolish right now.” There’s this separation between that exact thought, and this place of “observation” where you NOTICE that you just had that thought.

The point of meditation is to withhold judgement of that thought, whether it’s positive or negative. This means that you neither agree nor disagree that the thought of “Well this is dumb. I feel foolish right now” is true and describes your current state. You simply…notice the thought – nothing more.

The next part of meditation is learning to let go of that thought and give it the space to move on and dissipate from your mind.

A thought can only be let go when you don’t hold on to it (“well duh”, but wait, hear me out) To release the hold of a thought you have to withhold the judgment of it. If you just allow the thought to exist on its own and don’t judge it as true to you or not true to you, with a little patience and time, that thought will slip away to the stream of consciousness from where it came.

Then comes the good part, the stillness of the space between thoughts. The “promise land” of mediation.

When you purely notice a thought and allow it to pass, there is a space before the next thought floats into frame. As you get better and better at mediation, the time that stillness lingers will increase, but the stillness is the “promise land” regardless of how long it remains uninterrupted by another thought.

It is in this stillness that you reach total immersion into the present moment. Unburdened by past traumas, and free of the weight of the future, the present moment is calm and poised to create.

It is in this still state of presence that you allow your awareness to expand. I often am led into epiphanies, reason, and ideas when in this stillness.

I liken meditation to cleaning dirty glasses. Sometimes in your working life, you are seeing through dirty glasses but you don’t know it. You try to answer your own burning questions, figure out how to act, and decipher the world around you, but it’s just not clear. Taking time to find stillness through meditation is like cleaning your dirty glasses. It takes a little bit of work, but once you put on those freshly cleaned glasses, you see things that you either couldn’t see before, or, just looked right past because the little details were all muddied.

Plenty more on this to come. But that’s a 101 for you earthlings.

Contact me to learn more.

Get Fit 101

theunclesam4@gmail.com (Sam Leszczynski) — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 14:38:46 GMT

Welcome fatties!

If you’re looking to make the girls squeal and surprise yourself in the mirror within a year, you’ve come to the right place. As a certified, and practiced, personal trainer and nutritionist I’m going to break down getting in shape without all the misinformation and polarization you see on the intertubes.

First things first: you need correct priorities. The goal is to BUILD MUSCLE. The process of building muscle is the most effective method of also BURNING FAT. You may think you need long bouts of cardio or intense HIIT sessions to met those chunks off your frame, but you would be oh so very wrong.

This goes hand-in-hand with nutrition, so bear with me for a second. In order for your body to tap into and burn body tissue (like fat or muscle) for energy, the body needs to have less input of energy, or consumed calories, than it needs to burn through to sustain your daily activity level.

Put simply, deprive yourself of energy and your body will use up stored energy (muscle or fat) to make up for the deficit. This means you need to EAT LESS CALORIES THAN YOU BURN.

What burns the most amount of calories then you may be asking? Heavy weight lifting and having large amounts of muscle mass. You see, heavy weight lifting stimulates burst of high intensity needed to lift weights. Running, for example, is a moderate stimulation over a long period of time. Short of sprinting, running does not send a big enough signal to burn maximal calories. If it did, you would’t be able to sustain the effort required for maximal stimulation without resting…LIKE YOU DO IN BETWEEN SETS for weight lifting.

There’s a reason you can’t squat heavy for 40 minutes straight – it’s too intense, aka it sends such a large stimulus to the body to use energy that you can only maintain it for short periods of time like in a set that lasts somewhere under 2 minutes. Stack many of these sets in a row in a workout, and you have accumulated a ton of energy-intensive periods of work that your body needs to fuel itself for.

Additionally, muscle tissue requires more energy to be preserved in the body than fat tissue, so just by having more muscle, you will burn more calories in a day just existing.

Soooooo, weight lifting provides the best stimulus for fat burn. Coupled with eating less calories than you use, you’re body will dig into those fat stores (and not the muscle because it will be trying to build those to keep up with the constant lifting demand) thus burning fat AND building muscle. Which, will result in higher amounts of muscle tissue that take EVEN MORE calories/energy to maintain.

By heavy lifting, you will burn fat, build muscle, AND burn more total daily calories just by having more muscle so your fat buring process will expedite as you get stronger.

And the girls will squeal. And blush. And maybe pop a stiffy, who knows? It’s 2024 people, anything can happen.

So point number 1: start lifting heavy weights and eat less calories than you burn.

How to know how much to eat? Start here: https://tdeecalculator.net/

Be honest about everything and you’ll end up getting a “maintenence calorie” number. Eat 350-500 calories less than that number daily.

“Oh waaaaahh, you’re saying I need to track calories. Booo, that’s too strict and takes too much work. It’s enforcing body-shaming and I’ll end up with an eating disorder from the guilt and shame of not hitting exact numbers…waaah waaaaah.”

If you thought anything from the above quote you’re a bitch.

Do you want efficient and practical results? Then you must follow an efficient and practical plan. Use science to your advantage. Is calorie counting a perfect science. No, no it is not. Show me a more precise way of tracking daily metrics to base your energy consumption around than calorie counting though and I will personally lick your balls.

Wanna get hard in the gym? Better get hard as a person too, and not by that 2024 girl who’s popping stiffys thru her tiny onepiece either. Being a hard dude means holding yourself to your word. UNWAVERING. Being intentional and chasing down intentional goals. Calorie counting is hard and meticulous: yes. So is everything else you’ll need to do to get and stay in shape though, so fuckin deal with it.

Now to exercise programming.

Emphasis on heavy compound weights with minor accessory/isolation movements. 4-7 days a week. I lift every day.

“Oh-but-um you know that you need rest days for optimal growth?! *pushes broken glasses up greasy nose*

Guess what the underlying goal of optimal training is? Achieving the best results in the shortest amount of time.

Over here, we’re training for LIFE. We will NEVER reach a point where we hit a certain spot in our fitness journey and think, “Ope that’s it, I’ve reached the top, time to retire and become not as in shape anymore.” FUCK THAT.

I take rest days when I can barely get out of bed or when I legitimately need them desperately. I’m not concerned with how long it takes to get the body of my dreams, because I’m committed to training consistently for the rest of my life. At some point, I will achieve the physique I require of myself. It will happen. When? Eventually. Who really cares. My bigger concern is showing up everyday. If I was a professional bodybuilder, it would be different. But I’m a professional life-liver, so my goal is not perfectly optimal training, but consistent and CONSTANT training.

So emphasis on compound movements like pushups, pullups, presses, rows, dips, squats, lunges, hinges, and raises. Freeweights, barbells, and bodyweight. Machines teach you to use concentrated semi-isolation of a few body parts. Freeweights, barbells, and your bodyweight teach your body to use everything it needs to stabilize, balance, and provide force and power for every movement.

4-7 times a week. HEAVY and INTENSE. Use weights that leave you needing a 1-3 minute rest inbetween each set, so rep ranges of a heavy 4-12 or BIG sets of a slightly lighter 30-50.

Lift heavy, eat less than you burn, and focus only on showing up and working out the absolute best you possibly can on that day, and watch as your body changes over time. The time it takes is not the goal: showing up everyday is.

Contact me to learn more at theunclesam4@gmail.com or on Insta @unclesam_fit