Meeting Objectives and Stress

I'm meeting my objectives.  I am 22% complete regarding my weight loss goal and 28% towards completion of my bar goal.

First, my weight loss goal has been within the scope of what I projected.  I ran 62 miles and lost 2 pounds of body fat in 14 days.  Life's not fair that I have to exercise so hard to lose so little, but that is life.  In my last post, I go into the basics of my weight loss approach.  Let me talk to you about plateau.

Many, as well as I, struggled with plateau.  It's when dieting and exercising isn't working for you anymore.  Your body has stubbornly stopped losing weight.  Here's why.  It's mainly because of the exercise portion of restricting calories not the dieting part.

When you lose weight, it gets harder because you burn less calories per day.  Yes, although you're more efficient in whatever exercise you were doing, you also weight less.  Hence, you are carrying less on you.  Hence you are exerting less energy.  For instance, if you lose five pounds, and you run five miles, you now need to carry five pounds on your body to burn the same amount of calories.

So - when you lose more weight you need to step up the diet or the work out or both at a certain point where your calories in becomes the same energy as calories out. That's where I'm at and so excessive running appears to be the only way.  Anyways - it is working.

Regarding studying for the bar, I feel  very stressed.  My virtual bar adviser told all of us we need 8 hours of sleep everyday.  Like, I didn't know that, but thank you for the advice.  Further, they got peeved at me because I kept asking questions on real property, namely on some obscure ancient concept that is called rule against perpetuities.  My bar provider test you on a lot of multiple choice questions on this complex subject, but when I asked for an answer they said, "Don't worry about it."  =( I felt like strangling someone and asking why I keep getting tested on it.

It's good to take a one day break.  Just one day out of the whole week.  I pickled salmon.  Yup.  Like pickling cucumber pickles.  I brined the salmon and egg overnight.  Afterwards, I made a spice mix and dumped it into white wine vinegar and sugar. 

My mother smiled as she said, my older sister used to pickle things like you're doing.  I said fish is commonly pickled in Germany and Scandinavia. 

For breakfast, she fried for me tempura zucchini flowers fresh from her garden. MMMM...  I then made myself a mimosa out of champagne, pineapple and strawberry juice.

For lunch, I bought dried ice and used the blender to make myself whiskey ice cream.  MMMMM. 
I felt the stress leaving. 

Losing Weight

I made a goal during this stressful time of studying for that bar and that is to halve my body fat.

After I came back to America from New Zealand, my body fat ballooned in 3 months of living in California.  I looked at my medical file recently and realized I went from 19% body fat, which is average to 25% in three months, while living in the USA.  Also, when I went to 25%, my mommy let me know I was getting fat.  Not pleasant at all.

Over time, without trying too hard, I went back to down 145lbs (22% body fat) and just hovered there for awhile.  I tried to lose weight, but my weight wouldn't budge  I almost stayed within the 140's range, no matter how much I worked out.  This was generally true in NZ too.

Then in my spring semester of 2L year (last year), during finals week, I dedicated two months to losing weight.  I took a very "scientific approach" to it.  I became neurotic about trying to understand the biochemical pathways and physiology of how the body loses weight.  It brought me back to my life science days as a biology major as an undergraduate.

I tried everything previously without much success, ranging from diets to working out.  I never yo yoed because I never lost weight.   In my scientific approach, I had a theory: everything is measurable.  I should be able to project how much weight I'd lose with numbers, and test if my projections were accurate.  Overall - the theory, approach, and results were sound.

Here's how I started.  One of my problems with dieting and losing weight was how much bogus nonsense was out there.  Everyone who's fit seems to know something about dieting, and so, they state half-truths that are not backed by research.  People believe them because they are fit, but that's not a good measure of arriving at the truth or truths. 

One of the fitness tales I bought into was I heard that the average man burns 2000 calories a day.  I also heard that for every pound of muscle you have you burn 50 calories more a day.  The latter statement came from the First Edition of Abs Diet by the Men's Health Chief Editor!  Let me tell you; he was wrong!

At some point before I decided to put my theory into practice, for three months I kept a food log.  In this food log, I recorded everything I ate and it's corresponding calories.  Over the three months, I didn't gain a pound.  I averaged the calories I ate per day and discovered my basal metabolic rate was about 1450 calories a day.  This link appears to be the most accurate one I found on the web.  It came close at saying I burned 1500 calories a day.  http://exercise.about.com/library/blbmrcalculator.htm

So - that's one false assumption that probably hindered my weight loss.  I did not burn 2000 calories a day; I burned much less.  Further - muscle hardly increased my basal metabolic rate.  In fact, I found out that one study found every pound of muscle only added 6 more calories burned a day, while fat burned 2 calories a day.  Yes, there was an increase but a very small one that didn't justify more eating.

Now that I accurately knew how much I burned a day, I found out that one pound of fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories.  That means that I had to create a deficit of 3,500 calories.  I found I could do this in three ways: 1) restrict how much I ate (the diet), 2) increase the calories I burned (exercise), or 3) combine the two former methods.

To test my theory, I did the first one first.  I restricted how much I ate everyday by 500 calories for a week.  In theory, if I did this I would lose one pound a week because -500 cal./day x 7 days = 3,500 cal = 1 pound.

Did this work?  For the most part.  I say for the most part because it took about 10 days to see the effects.  Not sure why it took longer, but in general I found even with my approach - weight loss was, is, or will not be linear.

The 500 calorie deficit was also very taxing on my mind and body.  I felt like I was and literally was starving, and the hunger pains were so severe I would wake up in the middle of the night because of them.  I knew that if this is what it took for one pound of fat, I wasn't going to survive to lose 9 more pounds.  I would give into my body's rage and pain.  I couldn't imagine 9 more weeks of this.  Apparently, hunger is the number one reason that people fail in their diet.

So - I picked the next alternative: increase the calories burned.  I did more calculations and decided I was going to do enough aerobic exercise to be the equivalent of 3,500 calories per week.  Boy, was I shocked to find that this would be for me the equivalent of 35 miles (56 km) a week.  But that's what I decided to do I would run 14 miles twice a week and 7 miles once a week.  That's three runs a week.

Again, like my experience with just restricting calories, the fat melted away but not in the projected 7 days.  Some weeks, I would lose 0 pounds and the week after I would just drop two.  But on average over the 9 weeks, my projections were on target.

It was easier to create the deficit by exercise because I would run at night.  When I came home, I'd take an ice bath to induce further calorie burning.  I would be so tired I would just sleep the hunger away.  When I woke up, somehow, I wasn't feeling that excruciating hunger pains like dieting.  For me - at least - I think my body knew the difference between using fat as fuel for exercise versus using fat because it thought I was starving.  The earlier was not as painful as the latter - though there were points I would have sharp hunger pains when I ran as well.

Unfortunately, after hitting weight training again, I have to admit I lost some muscle mass too.  There was no way around it because when you're body burns high volumes of fat, it takes some of your lean muscle away too.

Losing weight has two challenges.  I just covered the first one, actually losing weight.  The second problem is maintaining your new weight.  A good analogy I use is that losing weight is like war time (a war with your body) and the second phase is peace time (governance after conquering).  From my observations, peace time is harder.  How many people do you know that gain their weight back after losing it?  This is dangerous because once you do, you've increased the ratio of fat to lean muscle mass because remember, lean muscle mass was lost during war time.  I like my approach to maintenance because I know how many calories I burn a day, and I just need to eat that amount or just a little less.

One year after that life-defining ordeal, I really managed to keep off the weight, hovering around 133-14 lbs.  I did it by eating my 1450 calories a week.  If I ate more, I would adjust by running more.  Sadly, people made fun of me for eating like a bird or pecking away at my food.  It was sad because it was them who were eating gigantic portions and me the exact amount I needed. 

Now that I'm studying for the bar, I am under extraordinary stress.  Studying each exception and exception to the exception of the rule of law just puts your mind and body under pressure.  I decided to recreate the military like training I instituted for myself last year. Lot of former bar testers have told me: exercise a lot.  I admit, it does help clear your mind quite a bit.

I've made it a personal goal to halve my body fat.  I am at 12-13.5% body fat now.  In other words, I have 16-18 pounds of body fat on me.  I'll take the more conservative estimate of 18 pounds.  Half of that is 9lbs, which means that's how much I need to lose.

On my current running regime, which again took some time for my body to kick in, I've been losing the approximate one pound per week.  Yes, I still have sharp hunger pains while I run.  I've lost one pound, so that means I need 8 more to lose, which is roughly about 8 more weeks.

That's too long.  Weight loss can't happen too slowly or you'll give up on your regime, and it's impossible for it to be too fast either.  (The Four-hour-body is just crock, it takes a lot of energy to even breakdown fat; therefore, it takes a long time to lose fat.)

I'll make a few modifications from my last regime.  I think I can speed it up by one more pound a week by going on a healthy vegetable protein diet and limiting my carbohydrates.  We'll see: it's another experiment on my body.  On the off days, I'll do strength training to maintain my muscle mass.  So - hopefully it'll be successful.

And my new curiosity is determining how to minimize those sharp hunger pains.  I'm not sure; I have to do more research.

I'll post more details on the mechanism of fat burning that I've discovered.  I'll post you on my wins and losses as well.

I'm out,
PC

Graduation and Study for the Bar

I graduated.  It was stressful to manage the family politics, but in this event, everyone came together and didn't cause WW III or another Cold War.  Keep in mind, my guests were from North Korea, Japan, Russia, Denmark, the USA, and Taiwan and South Korea.  No Germans that represented.  :(

The combination could've made for a difficult political situation, but in this case people behaved, especially my family.  That was certainly a relief.

Graduation for me was just eh and blah, except for the fact that I have very caring and loving people in my life that came to celebrate it with me.  It was more for them than it was for me.  The funniest part of it all was that people had brought in alcohol inside the room where we prepared for graduation ceremony.  It was early in the afternoon, and I thought to myself, why didn't I think of that.  Why is there a hint of negativity in all of it?

Well, because graduation marks an end, right?  Well, not for 95%+ of law graduates of 2012 across the country and me.  After just one week of rest, we have to start studying for the BAR - which is perhaps the final of all finals.

I only had one week off between my last year of school and the bar. and then the studying started.  It's the final of all finals, as it spans 3 days, and covers 12 subjects of law, which if one took each of those subjects consecutively as classes, it would take two years to complete.  The BAR is divided into 3 parts: the multiple choice (one full day), 6 essays and a performance examination (2 days).

Studying goes something like this.  8-10 hours a day, everyday for 6 weeks.  Half a day on Saturdays.  Then in the last month, 12 hours everyday (no more breaks.)  =(  As the Koreans say, "Starting is half the battle."  I definitely was not enjoying the self-discipline to re-start classes I had to refresh from three years ago.  I kept reminding myself , why didn't you use your week to take a holiday in Cancun?  No point in crying over spilled milk.  I didn't have the miles to afford to travel this time, and I decided to spend my free time with my family and friends just hanging out.

So - do I have any wisdom or magical advice about going through a marathon like this?  It's nothing you don't already know.  I'll state my principles nonetheless.  Work hard, stay focused, and success comes in the day-to-day small activities.  Do them well.  And during times that require endurance, remember: happiness is surely overrated.

My Life In Review

The last few days have closed certain chapters in my life.  I know - that sounds dramatic, but it's true.  For instance, I finished my last school examination of my life.  That's it!  No more.  And heck yeah!  That's about 8-9 years of post high school, and I think I estimated I've taken over 100 school exams if not more during that period.  I do not, ever, repeat: ever, need another school exam in my life.  If this all sounds melodramatic, it's not - at least not if you've been through a good law school.  I've had 15 written exams and 3 clinical exams in my law school tenure.  Each exam is anywhere from 3-6 hours.  Even though I have to revise a 20-25 page paper, I can tell you it really felt like a burden lifted off of my chest and shoulders.  I might go back to school but not for a certificate or degree.  If anything, I'd like to get some of my foreign language skills more proficient.

Another chapter is next month I'll have to say good bye to my 20's.  I'm going to be hitting the age of 30 soon.  With that, brings some harsh realities.  Here's one: people are dying around me.  And since the baby boomers are a bigger population than my Y generation, my generation will see more people die than I think our subsequent generation.  Isn't that a morbid thought?  You're probably wondering why I bring this up.

Well - my neighbor, who I've known since I was two years old passed away.  Before you feel sad for me or him, we weren't that close.  So - no sympathy really needed - although I suppose a human being dying is a sad thing.  It was surreal though.  I got a call from my mother while I was studying for that final final, and she said, "I have sad news."  My heart dropped.  I thought it was my 15-year-old cat Luke who had passed away.  He does have skin cancer.  She just said, "The neighbor passed away.  I can't believe it.  I talked to him the moment before he died.  He was mowing the lawn, and I said, 'Hi.'  Then he had a heart attack and died.'"

I'm writing about this because I made some observations about that neighbor.  In general, he was a nice guy.  I didn't know that much about him.  I went inside his house once because his daughter, who was a classmate, invited me over once.  Other than that, I noticed that in his last year of life he entered into retirement.

He was 65 when he died.  I can say I genuinely saw him enjoy life.  He was the happiest I ever saw him in retirement.  He bought a Mercedes convertible and drove it with the top down.  He was gardening more - evidenced by the fact he mowed the lawn before he died.  He also spent a lot more time with his grandchildren; he was practically raising them.  And then, he croaked.

I thought to myself, isn't that cruelly ironic that he worked a job he didn't particularly love for 30 years only to retire, fantastically enjoy one year of life, and then die.  I remember having dinner with my father once and telling him I wanted to retire at 30.  At the time, I must have been 25, and it looks like that future I envisioned ain't happening.  But he said, "That's way too early to retire!"

I replied back, "So you want me to retire when my body is old and useless.  I won't be able to be as healthy.  I'll be unattractive.  What will I do with my time then?  I can't even travel."

He said, "You have a good point."

That is exactly the point I'm making about the neighbor.  He retired when he was not in good health - and for what - to enjoy one year of it and croak.  The whole concept of retirement got to me - and bothered me.  It made me put my life back into perspective.

In contrast, I have a 15 year old cat, Luke, who is fighting skin cancer.  I think he's doing a mighty fantastic job of fighting the good fight.  Maybe because even though he's an animal, I think he knows he has a purpose.  His age in human years probably translates to about 65-70 as well.  If he spoke English, I'm also certain, he'd say he's had 15 happy years if he died today.  I know, our family fostered that happiness for him.  Of course he never had to work or worry about life's stresses, but still, it has to be quite an accomplishment to say that he lived a life of being loved and reciprocating it for 15 years.  He still has more years to go; I'm sure.

That takes me back to my life in review.  I'm back in a transitional period.  I'm graduating law school soon.  And in some odd way, I feel like it's deja vu.  This is the third time I've been in this place.  The first time was the moment before I left America to go to New Zealand.  I  wondered then, what am I going to do with my life?  The second time was when I left New Zealand.  I asked what am I going to with my life.  Now, I'm at the same mental state with graduating law school.  What am I going to do with my life?

Now - if you've ever been caught in these cycles or circles, like I have, it's good to remind yourself you're not trapped in some infinite loop.  It's more like a spiral with added depth and dimension.  I never had all the answers to make the decision to this question, but I feel like I've picked up more pieces of the puzzle every time I'm confronted with this question.

Only this time, I look at what happened with my neighbor and what's happened with Luke.  I then tell myself, remember, you only live once.  That's a good starting place.  You live bound by time, and you live life one moment at a time.  Time moves the same for you as it does for everyone.  What will you do with it?  And for God sake, whatever you do as a living, make sure you enjoy it.  Don't put in thirty miserable years defining yourself by what you make and take, but put those years into defining yourself by what you create and give.

Those principles don't leave me with any concrete future plans, though I think I have some sketched out path ahead.  If you have any advice, I'm open to it.  Until then, I have one last paper to revise.  Overall, I'm happy that I'm reframing my life back into perspective.  It's really shown me that a lot of the petty things we care about, such as status, accolades, keeping up with Jones', and taking everything so damn seriously is seriously not worth a damn.

Fighting the Police as a Law Student

It was my last semester as a law student at UCLA Law School.  Late on a Monday night, I received a phone call from the Captain of one of the LAPD’s Division.  He told me he had read my legal memorandum many times, concluded that the officer pulled over the client without probable cause and then he released her vehicle, waived the impound fees, and told me he would change the station’s impound hearing policy.

When I applied to law school, in my personal statement I wrote that I wanted to attend law school to give a voice to those who otherwise do not have access to legal representation.  The Captain’s call confirmed or me that I had made the right choice to change my life course and pursue a career in law.

This case came to me because I am enrolled in a client-counseling clinic at UCLA Law School.  In these clinics, we get hands-on legal training with real life cases.

In my most recent case, I advocated for a Mexican woman whose car had been impounded for 30-days because she does not have a California driver’s license.  On the day her car was seized, she was driving to court with her two year-old child to get a restraining order.  Her ex-boyfriend and father of her children had attempted to kill all of them in a mass suicide.  With all of them in his car, he crashed it into the center divider of the freeway.  Somehow, even though the car was totaled, everyone survived.

On her way to court to get the restraining order, a Patrol Officer ran her license plate in his database and discovered that a previous owner of the car, named Nicholas, had a current arrest warrant for not showing up to traffic court.  Even though she did not commit any traffic offenses, he still stopped her.

After the Officer pulled her over, he clearly saw that the driver was a woman with a child.  He asked for her driver license.  Because she did not have one, she gave him her Mexican Identification.  He cited her for driving without a license, had her car towed, and placed a mandatory thirty-day hold on it.

The impound fees for a 30-day impound typically run close to $2,000, and often outstrip the value of the car.  If the car’s owner does not pay the impound fees, the tow yard can destroy the driver’s credit by sending it to collections.

Although I recognized that my client didn’t have a California driver’s license, she was in an exceptional situation, in which she was fearing for her life and the life of her children.   A 30-day impound was a disproportionate, unjust fit for driving without a license.  She is a single and poor mother, who would have to pay close to $2,000 or have her property sold at public auction.  With already having to support herself and her children, how would she ever pay this?

Furthermore, this was my third clinical case where I witnessed an officer violating our Right to Privacy guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.  My second year Constitutional Criminal Procedure class taught me that an officer can only conduct a traffic stop when he has reasonable suspicion that a crime is occurring at the time of the stop.  Otherwise, the temporary seizure violates the driver’s Right to Privacy.

This stop was a constitutional violation.  There were no facts to support that the officer believed the female driver was the previous owner named Nicholas.  It was pure speculation.

Even if he could make up some facts that he had more than a hunch, he should have abandoned his investigation the moment he saw that the driver was a woman.  The name on the warrant was for a Nicholas, clearly a male name.  There was no way my female-client could have been this Nicholas.

That brings me to my next point though: the mandatory thirty-day impound policy encourages racial profiling.  I requested an internal police impound hearing for release of the vehicle.  Yet, before I argued it, I consulted with my trial advocacy clinical professor.  His advice would help me exploit the officer’s racial bias during cross-examination.

At my hearing, I began my cross-examination of the officer.  The officer gave evasive answers, so that I wouldn’t lock him down regarding his problem with having no reasonable suspicion.  Yet, as I learned from the trial professor, evasive answers lead to inconsistent statements.  Get them on record and then exploit the biases and inconsistencies.

The first inconsistency exposed the officer’s political agenda of targeting the Mexican community.  The officer said he never inquired into where the driver was going or into the urgency of her situation because he spoke no Spanish.  Yet, he said that his law enforcement experience taught him that Nicholas could be a female name.  How could one know so much about Spanish names, when one did not speak Spanish? He would use any weak justification to pull over Latino drivers.

The second inconsistency showed that the officer what he believed about Mexican sovereign documents.  In my cross-examination, I asked him , “Why he didn’t abandon his search when he saw the name on the Mexican ID?”  He said, “The LAPD didn’t accept Mexican IDs as valid per its policy.”  I asked him where that was in the LAPD Policy.  It wasn’t in the policy.  I stressed that it was an acceptable form of ID for the Federal government.  Therefore, why wasn’t it valid for him? His only justification for believing that sovereign documents from Mexico were unreliable was that it came from Mexico.

Although it was clear I should have won that hearing, the Division detective adjudicated against me, refusing to release the vehicle even though the officer did not have probable cause for the seizure in the first place.  At that point, I informed my supervising civil rights attorney.  She asked me to write a legal memorandum to address the Division’s unlawful decision. Memorandums are objective briefs that outline the facts, the law, and then describe how the two link together.

To write that memorandum, I drew from everything I learned in my first year lawyering skills class, which focused on legal writing and research.  Together we proofread it and then sent it to the Chief of the LAPD, Charlie Beck.  They wrote back that they would investigate. The next business day, I received the call from the Captain, who reversed the adjudicator’s decision. It was good to know I helped out a nice mother, but, even more satisfying, that I was able to change an unlawful policy.

My colleagues from my previous career often ask me if I had made the right decision to go to law school.  My last case as a law student showed me I did.  That was my final assignment for that class.  The lady ended up changing her phone number; I wonder if I'll ever see her again.

Last Day of School

A lot of you have followed my blog since I left New Zealand.  Hasn't time gone by fast?  Today is the last day of my law school classes.  What that means is no more formal education!  That's it.  I have nine years of post high school education.  9 years!  That doesn't include when I started pre-school at 4.  Today was the last day of class in my entire life.

Also, the final class of my formal and professional education, was anticlimatic.  No fanfare.  No food.  Nothing special.  No powerful speech about being great human beings.  It was just a regular class.  I remember the last day of class from my 1L professors more.  It was all so much more dramatic then.

A lot of my classmates are ready to be done.  If I took their charted course, I would be too.  Many of them took the same type of classes that resemble 1L year, tax, business association, etc.  You can do that.  And if you do that for three years, it'll get boring real fast.  Hence the saying, 1L they scare you.  2L they work you.  3L they bore you.

1L scared me.  2L worked me.  3L worked me more.  This has been a strange year in general.  I think I really enjoyed it though because it was entrenched in practical experience.  I served the poor and won a lot of hearings.  I did three clinical classes, where I learned depositions, opening statements, closing statement, directing witnesses, cross-examining witnesses, interviews and negotiations.  There are a lot of skill sets there.

I lectured in France.  I taught undergrads and wrote two pieces that are getting published.  I have two or three more that will hopefully be picked up for publication.  I won a number of hearings for the most prosecuted, persecuted, and invisible members of society.  I had a police policy changed in the LAPD.

So - lots done, lots of stress, lots of pain, and lots of fun.  My next post will be on my most recent police impound hearing.

All in all - the lesson are basic but have to be said

Don't stop learning.
Don't stop growing.
Don't be afraid.

The City of Demons

I wanted to see the City of Demons. Why do I keep calling it the City of Demons? For all you Bible scholars out there, do you see any word familiar in the City of Baalbek? Hint: First four letters.

The First and Second Kings describe a god called Baal, "false God." It was originally worshiped by the Phoenicians - who were also the people who did come up with the alphabet system.

From Bcharre, the road to Baalbek was closed. So, we had to make a complete loop down the mountain and come in from another road. A one hour journey turned into a five hour one.

The Phoenicians first dedicated the city to their God Baal. Then, came the Romans - who dedicated it to Zeus. Then came the Christians, who sanctified it to the Christ King. And then, the Muslims took it over, and made it a citadel when the crusaders came.

I really enjoyed exploring these ruins. I felt like a kid again in some ancient Legoland. This was the good part of not having tourists. There weren't people crawling around everywhere. It was just me and the ruins and the time to reflect on them.

It was so impressive to touch stone that was over 2,000 years old. Apparently, it took 100,000 slaves to build the place. Also, the Phoenicians apparently sacrificed people in this temple. That practice stopped when the Romans came, but temple prostitutes were always about.

The first picture shows me sitting on the alter of Jupiter. Now, it's the alter to the Ferrari god. =)

Next post: On Arab Culture Shock.