Vinnie Tortorich

Today my friend Katie wrote a guest blog. Yes, you read that right, we have another contributor. Eat your heart out Huffington Post.

– Vinnie

Hi, my name is Katie. I’m a friend of Vinnie’s. I love his blog and was thrilled when he asked me to guest post on it. I admire people like Vinnie who educate others on fitness and health. Vinnie’s also a fighter who battled and overcame a life threatening illness and I admire and respect that even more. Anyhoo, I am not famous. I am nothing special. I live in Snellville Friggin’ Georgia…not Beverly Hills. Am I “somebody?” Maybe not to you, but to my 7 year old son I am. And that’s truly all that matters to me. I’ve always been into exercise. I was raised by a father who was a professional athlete so being fit was very important in my family. From the time I was 17 I was working out, hitting the gym for hours. The goal always being the same – to look good, to be thin, to fit into a size 4 (I understand that a size 4 is like obese in California but i digress – haha). The point is, I never thought about what I was achieving for my body. Three years ago all that changed when I picked up a tennis racket. It altered my life, the way I looked at my body, and the way I felt about myself as a woman. It empowered me. I would go out on the court not thinking about how big my thighs were or whether my ass looked okay. I was only focused on taking down my opponent, on figuring out how to play my best game to win the match, taking risks, pushing myself. And in the end when I won, I didn’t care how many calories I had burned or how many inches may have been lost, it was all about how I played the game, worked hard for something, and saw it pay off. Yes, my body was toned and trim from all the tennis, but that was just the added bonus. I’ll never forget a tennis tournament I entered. I was playing a girl who was far better than me, more polished, played in college, trained by a coach. I was a self taught scrappy player who won many times on sheer will and determination. I shouldn’t have won that match, but I did. Somehow. I pushed my body beyond what I thought it could do, and in the end I was left holding the trophy. I’ll always remember my son watching me win that match, cheering me on, and running up to me after it was over screaming, “I knew you could do it mommy!” He watched me achieve a goal I set out for myself. That right there is worth more than any number on a scale or any coveted size in a pair of jeans. I’ll take that moment over all the expensive things in the world or a waist the size of Angelina Jolie’s. I tell you all that to tell you this. We live in the most body conscious self absorbed “image is everything” society. Women sweat it out in the gym just to obtain what they think is the ideal and forget that their bodies were made for so much more than just fitting in a pair of size 0 skinny jeans. The day I put a tennis racket in my hand I finally saw my body as so much more than an object. Now, I’m not a model. I don’t have millions of dollars. I don’t wear Prada to get my coffee. I am a mom and a teacher and a girl just trying to make it in this world. But I also became an athlete. I used my body to do something that makes me feel strong and powerful and fulfilled instead of used, objectified and superficial. A wise man once told me, Katie, there are millions of pretty girls out there, you better have something else. Well, I found my “something else” and I 40-love it, baby!

I’m writing this on Super Bowl Sunday. I start with that because I write these blog posts in advance. I just left Deano’s (also known as Dean Lorey, a guest blogger). He invited me to watch the big game. I didn’t really want to watch it. I don’t care who wins or loses. But it gave me a chance to hang out with a buddy and do guy stuff. The only tough part about watching the game was that it was a beautiful day in southern California and I had to get off my bike early. That’s OK though, I had a great time. I really didn’t care who won or loss. Well, first off, I’m not a fan of Ben Roethlisberger. I think he should be in jail, along with Michael Vick. Sometimes I think the NFL should stand for National Felon League. I told you that to tell you this. I tried my best to pay attention to the commercials, for no other reason than to know what will be talked about during morning drive time. Every yuk-yuk show will talk about the commercials and which ones were cool. There was one I liked more than all the others. These things are supposed to stick in your head but I can barely remember the company. It starts by showing products that used to be really hot but are now dinosaurs. They showed a guy walking with a turntable hooked to headphones. Of course now we have iPods. They showed heavy set women behind a glass window in an old gym. These women had that jiggly belt around them. Remember that? It was supposed to jiggle the fat off. There were several products like that when I was younger. One was an exercise bike that had an electric motor on it. This was a stationary bike and the pedals would spin automatically. The seat would raise and lower itself and the handle bars would go back and forth. It resembled something you’d see in a rodeo. The machine did all the work. It’s easy to look back on this stuff and laugh. How did we think this stuff would work? If this is true, which it is, will we be laughing one day about Sketchers Shape Up shoes? Will we laugh at the P90X workout videos? We look at Richard Simmons now as a joke. At one time he was the top fitness guy in the world. Is that the way we will Jillian Michaels from the Biggest Loser? As a joke? Products, whether fitness or not, get hot, then are gone. One of the biggest things I’ve dealt with in 30 years of professional training is that every time something gets hot, all of my clients want to jump on the bandwagon. I remind them that the human body hasn’t changed much over thousands of years. The way I learned diet and exercise at one of the top medical universities in the world 30-plus years ago works just fine. I use those principles on myself and my clients every day. My failure rate is very low. So the next time you want to get on a get fit quick program, ask yourself a simple question. Did I get out of shape quickly? If the answer is no, take your time and do it right.

I was on my spinner today in between clients trying to stay in shape. As I’ve written before, it’s pretty much the only time I watch television. I usually try to find something on the History Channel or Comedy Central. It doesn’t matter what I find or where I find it. The commercials all seem to be the same. It’s daytime television. Some commercials try to convince lowlifes to get a nursing assisting degree. It’s a degree to be a nurse’s nurse. Translated: you get to clean bedpans. Another of my favorite commercials…ambulance chasing attorneys. They tell you, while sitting on the couch, how you have a lawsuit against anybody and everybody. I had never heard of some of these mystery ailments until I heard about it on daytime television. Then there’s my all-time favorite of all the commercials. It’s the one where the guy or woman is bragging about losing 100 pounds. Did they go to Jenny Craig? Did they try Weight Watchers? Did they try the myriad of diets out there? Not even close. They lost weight with a lap band. I told you that to tell you this. The lap band procedure and it’s cousin the Fobi Pouch ( an even more drastic surgery) has been around a while. Eventually the person who gets it done is limiting the amount of food where their stomach used to be. The lap band puts a band around the stomach, making it smaller, so it holds less food. These commercials show these people as very proud of their success. The fact of the matter is, they shouldn’t be proud at all. They’ve succeeded at nothing. Eventually a person who has to have any of these procedures is literally a person who cannot be trusted with their stomach. Why do I care? It’s simple. Usually these morbidly obese people (the ones dragging down the healthcare system) say they’ve tried everything to lose weight but can’t. Apparently the one thing they’ve never tried was to eat less.

Today I have a guest blog post from my nephew, Michael Tortorich, from Louisiana. Unlike me, he gets paid to write. He also helps out with the site. We were talking one day and I thought this topic would work well as a blog post.

-Vinnie

Have you ever thought about who should be considered fat? In today’s politically correct world nobody is ever politely called “fat” in a flat-out manner – not as long as big-boned, heavy-set, husky and other such euphemisms suffice. Apparently nobody in grade school ever gets tagged as “slow” either. Way back in the 1980s, the word on the school yard was “dumb” for students who couldn’t make the grade. But nobody’s kid is dumb anymore. It turns out these cruel schools’ faculties have been overlooking an array of medical conditions preventing those students on the bottom rung of the academic ladder from finding their places among the top scholars. Nobody can be different anymore. Nobody can simply be unintelligent. We’re all unique. We’re all good at different things. I was never good enough to make it to NFL. It’s not because I had a learning disability keeping me from learning the playbook. It’s because I wasn’t all that great at football. There I go down a rabbit trail. Here’s what I want to say: There are people who have issues in life and we’re not doing them any favors by pretending they don’t. Some people are not going to be the next Albert Einstein. That’s OK. But we don’t have to pretend like things are different. I find it a healthy exercise to accept reality for what it is. I realize that I can stand to lose a few pounds. I know that my current size of 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds is on the hefty size. That’s reality. Like a lot of people, I’d like to lose some of that weight and get more physically fit. I don’t get a ton of exercise and I have been known to indulge in the plethora of food available to me. I try my best to keep on track but life often gets in the way. I’m lucky enough to have a fitness trainer in my family who doesn’t mind dispensing free advice. And as you may have noticed from reading this blog, he’s not giving me a family deal. Vinnie gives away health and fitness advice right here on a daily basis. We’re a close family and we talk to each other a lot. I can tell you, he practices what he preaches. I’ve personally taken his advice. It works. I can’t think of one time that he’s been wrong. When he first started this site, I wasn’t sure if he’d ever get it going. Man, was I wrong. This blog gets a ton of hits and the numbers are only growing. There I go down the rabbit trail again. I’d better wrap this thing up or Vinnie will cut me off from writing. It’s not like he has a shortage of people wanting to get involved with this thing. He’s like Arianna Huffington, only not as good looking. What we wanted to throw out there today is the difference between L.A. (Los Angeles) and La. (Louisiana). These are two vastly different cultures. That’s not to say that different is bad. Living in the heart of Cajun country has its advantages. Food is a way of life around here. We are a fat and happy people. At my current weight, I don’t have a huge belly hanging over my belt. But lots of guys around here are sporting the beer belly look. After a while, you get used to seeing it. Simply put, people here often get used to seeing overweight people. So when I complain about my weight and how I’d like to lose a few pounds, people often tell me I’m fine the way I am and that I’d be too skinny. That’s not how they roll in L.A. though.

I’m guessing it was around 1977 or maybe 1978. I was about 15 or 16 at the time. The one thing I remember was it was close to the end of the sexual revolution. You know, the whole free love hippie thing. I was trying to enjoy that as much as I could, but I was living in Louisiana, in the buckle of the Bible Belt to be exact. On a good day I’d end up with a hand job. But I digress. As I mentioned before, I pretty much lived in the middle of sugarcane fields on the outskirts of Donaldsonville. Apparently we had 7,000 people, but I think someone was padding the stats. It seemed more like 5,500. Anyway, the woman who owned the land down the street from our house was named Grace Garon. She inherited the land from her father. Sugarcane was not the way to go, she decided, so she sold the land. One day, a sign went up, a big giant billboard. It said, “Welcome to the Future Home of Wal-Mart.” To some of my younger readers who don’t know what a phone booth is, you may find this hard to believe. In 1978, I had never heard of Wal-Mart. I asked my good friend (I won’t divulge his name so let’s call him Bob). He said he was kind of familiar with it as a cheaper K-Mart. Something else was going on in our small town. There was more chatter than usual. The southern women usually talked about this guy or that guy who had a roving eye. Or this one or that one spent the night in New Orleans (known as the den of inequity). Once again, I digress (I really shouldn’t drink when I write these things) (but these are usually the best ones). The thing everybody was whispering about was how could Grace sell that land to Wal-Mart. It was going to bring a different element into the neighborhood. Low-income people would come in just to shop. And yes, I did here this…there will be a lot of blacks in our neighborhood. By the way, it’s those kinds of statements that made me leave Louisiana as quickly as I could. Nobody was willing to tell Grace how they felt. My parents weren’t part of that whole thing. My dad wanted the Wal-Mart next door. He wouldn’t have to go into town to shop as much. He could practically walk there. My friend Bob and I wanted to do something. We were young and we were rebels, at least we tried to be. We went out and measured that sign. We bought plywood the same size and whitewashed it. In the most professional way we could, we stenciled a sign of our own. I can’t remember what the sign said. But it was something like, “Loud mufflers, crowds, a hike in crime and loss in value to real estate…all this and more at the new Wal-Mart.” My friend and I waited until 2 a.m. and put our sign over it. We thought the sign would get a laugh. It got more. The newspapers took note, and people were talking. Somehow Miss Garon rescinded the deal. There was talk about who put the sign up. We swore to never speak of the sign to anyone else. Until now, we haven’t. Once a year at Christmas, we bring up “the sign.” Here’s the interesting part. Grace’s daughter, Lisa, reads this blog and is a friend of mine. She doesn’t read every one, but I have a feeling she’ll read this one. I’ve never told this to Lisa. She’ll learn it along with everyone else. As far as Bob, his anonymity has been kept. I’m only outing myself. As far as Miss Garon, I think she did quite well by selling that land to a developer who subdivided it. I don’t think she’s hurting. Everyone else’s property value went right up. I told you that to tell you this. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog. I think it was Pussification of a Nation Part III. I talked about Calabasas High School and the fact the P.E. teachers weren’t doing their jobs. Just like the small, tiny grassroots effort of myself and Bob, my small, tiny grassroots effort of writing that blog may have done something. Let me explain. As I described, my all-time favorite client, Genie Francis, and I were walking on the track. By the way, Genie will be on Oprah soon. I’ll tell you when it’ll be on. She will talk about the crap involved with being a child actor. I love Genie. She is like a sister I never had. But I digress…again. When Genie and I showed up at the school track last week, the kids weren’t sitting in the middle of the field. The teachers weren’t frolicking around the track twirling whistles around their fingers. Both teachers were on the field coaching. The kids were running and sweating. Could this be a coincidence that it happened after my blog? Absolutely. But I think the odds are in my favor that this blog was the reason this happened. Why? First off, lots of people in that area read this blog. It could have got back to the principal. And secondly, it would be too much of a coincidence that for the first time in a year and a half these teachers were actually doing their fucking jobs. To be honest, I don’t give a rat’s ass as to why they were doing their jobs and those kids were sweating. It put a big smile on my face because it was happening.

Martha Stewart…ever hear of her? She’s a blowhard with a Pollyanna attitude. Her whole thing is how to teach us how to live. One of her biggest taglines is Martha Stewart Living. Rachael Ray…know who she is? She’s the happy-go-lucky chef that tells everybody how to cook simply. She always has a big goofy smile on her face that makes her look like Jack Nicholson as the Joker. She smiles a lot. You know her catchphrase? Yum! Speaking of people with big goofy smiles, what about Tony Robbins? He also has a giant smile with big choppers. Are those teeth even real? Tony teaches us how to live positively and how to turn bad things into good things. Ever watch The View? That’s another feel-good show for women. It’s a bunch of cackling hens. How about Sarah Palin? She’s another do-gooder with a gosh-dernit attitude. You know what all of these people have in common? We want to punch them in the face half the time. They’re always bubbly. They’re like a high school cheerleader on crack. I told you that to tell you this. It’s come to my attention from more than one source that I am negative. The fact that I’m negative can’t be good for my blog. But you know what? I disagree. You know what else disagrees? Google Analytics and StatCounter. Both show an increase on my blog between 30-35 percent every month. To put it simply, my blog has grown by leaps and bounds. You know who else was negative? Just about every famous comedian you can think of. You know why? Nobody wants to know that someone else had a great fucking day. We always want to know that someone else is a little more miserable than we are. I do this blog for one reason and one reason only. To tell the truth about health and fitness as I see it. I’ve been in the fitness game for over 30 years. I’ve done nothing else but this. I’ve seen things come and go five different times. I think I know what I’m talking about. In this world you have ups and downs, highs and lows, ebb and flow, black and white, positive and negative. If I haven’t learned anything else about energy I’ve learned this…you need both. A lot of people from around the world read this blog. I want to tell everyone that reads this blog from outside the United States something about this great country. We are free people. It’s what makes our country great. If you happen to be someone who doesn’t like what I’m writing, by all means stop reading it.