Facing the Music And Living To Talk About It (20 page)

My generation may be the most drugged of all time. Early in elementary school, I saw kids in my classes taking drugs prescribed to treat hyperactivity, Attention Deficit Disorder, or both. There’s no doubt that many kids benefitted from these medicines, which kept them focused and alert, but there were also a lot of kids who abused them. Once it was discovered that these drugs could help you lose weight, study for exams more easily, or just give you a good high, some kids would go to their doctors and fake symptoms in order to get prescriptions, which they would subsequently misuse themselves or sell to their friends. My generation became all too comfortable with pill popping. But self-medicating is a dangerous trend, especially when kids buy pills from each other. On the street, there is little control over the dosage or even the chemical contents of the pills. A lot of these drugs are safe in controlled and prescribed amounts, but incredibly dangerous when sought from unknown sources and taken too often or in large quantities. In my experience, I’ve seen many people who have used drugs prescribed for ADD and hyperactivity, who then see taking Ecstasy, prescription painkillers, cocaine and meth as just another step up the ladder.

MY GENERATION MAY BE THE MOST
DRUGGED
OF ALL TIME.

These people take drugs without giving any thought to the long-term effects, until it’s too late. Are you headed for the place where you want to end up? Or are you headed for a panic attack, a heart attack, or something worse?

Smoking cigarettes is another crazy thing we do to ourselves. There is no excuse any more for doing that since we all know it is suicide, plain and simple—especially if you have a family history of lung cancer. There are many programs out there to help you stop smoking. Your doctor can recommend the best for you. Trust me, if I can quit by wearing a t-shirt with a stop-smoking message, you can find a way too. Bottom line: Do you really want to hack, cough, wheeze and slowly suffocate yourself to death?

Smoking isn’t the only way we can slowly kill ourselves, of course. The junk we eat can take us down too.

I WAS A JUNK FOOD JUNKIE

My name is Nick and I was a snack-food-aholic. Also, a sugary cereal fanatic, and a potato-chip-crunching-machine. I only dined at the finest of cheap, fast-food restaurants. There is nothing wrong with eating a cheeseburger, pizza or taco now and then as long as you are getting plenty of exercise too. But if you eat greasy fried foods all the time, the fat, sugars and chemicals will take a toll on your body. Now that I am eating healthier, I can tell the difference both physically and emotionally because the chemicals in junk foods can affect your mood too.

One of my big mistakes during my party days was stuffing myself late at night. I’ve learned that you really shouldn’t eat after sundown if you want to stay in shape. That’s a hard rule to follow because most adults don’t get home from work until much later than that and their families suffer, too, because they wait to eat together. My metabolism slows way down around seven at night so in the old days when I would eat much later than that, I was getting fatter as I slept. Now I try not to take unburned calories to bed with me.

Today, I’m a healthy-diet convert, a reformed fast-food junkie, and erstwhile late-night munchies king. There are a zillion nutritional plans out there, and maybe there is one that will work for you better than the others. The basic rule is just to be very conscious about what you eat and how often you eat.

I exchanged chicken wings, pizza, chips, and fries for egg-white omelets, grilled chicken, and veggies. I don’t mind sharing that I also became a master at counting calories. I went online and found the forms and the calorie count for just about everything edible so I could keep track of exactly what I put into my body. For me, that was half the battle. I was shocked to learn that many of the foods I thought were healthy and low-calorie were not. Apples are nutritious but they are not low in calories. One small apple is about 60 calories. A banana is about 75. Then again, a typical cream-filled cake snack is about 250 calories—and I was known for eating two boxes of them in one sitting!

…THE WEIGHT DIDN’T
COME OFF EASILY.

I wasn’t just a binge drinker. I was a binge eater too. I’d get drunk or high, or just sad, and I’d start popping things in my mouth as fast as I could. I’d eat because I was depressed, and then I’d be even more depressed because I was so overweight and out of shape.

Like most young guys, I hadn’t paid much attention to calories. But I learned that you only need about 1,800 to 2,000 calories a day to sustain you if you are a generally healthy person. That’s enough to just break even on a daily basis if you don’t exercise a lot. To lose weight you have to eat less or exercise more, and sometimes both.

Eating less food doesn’t mean cutting down on your meals. I actually began eating every three hours, but my portions were smaller and the menu options were composed of mostly healthy carbs with low sugar content because sugar releases insulin that makes you hungry.

I cut my calories by about 500 per day and exercised for an extra hour or two. I was lucky enough to work with a trainer and a nutritionist to achieve just the right balance to insure that I was burning calories and losing pounds, but there are many fine books and tapes out there that can guide you to do the same. Even with their help, the weight didn’t come off easily. For a while it seemed like the scale was stuck. But I kept setting small goals and slowly increasing them. I started out just trying to lose a pound a week. Achieving those attainable goals always gave me a little boost.

If you are like me and tend to eat when stressed, try to be conscious of that impulse. Instead of heading to the refrigerator or the pantry, go to the gym, watch a movie, or at least substitute healthier snacks for the junk food. I lost my belly fat by swapping fast food for healthier fare and by making sure I exercised at least five times a week.

I also visualized myself getting thinner, and I thought every day about how much better I would feel and look when I lost my gut and excess body fat. I’d look in the mirror and imagine myself in a whole new body with a slimmer waist and a thinner face. I’d see it and then I’d believe it was possible, and once it was imprinted on my subconscious, I made smarter food choices, I worked out consistently every day and my body responded in kind.

Soon, people were noticing and saying things, and within six months the excess weight was gone. Now, I know it won’t be that simple or easy for most people. I have a body type that lends itself to being thin. I was also fairly young, and my food choices before that had been so awful that any improvement was bound to garner results. But I know some people have thyroid challenges, metabolism problems, and other medical factors to deal with. If you do have any of these issues, your doctor or a nutritionist can help you deal with them. All you have to do is be willing to help yourself. It all begins with you.

A BETTER HIGH

The other half of the equation in losing weight is building muscle. The benefits to working out with weights and doing cardio are incredible, but getting into a regular routine can be a challenge if you weren’t an athlete at a young age.

I could spend hours on stage performing and dancing but going into a gym to work out was torture for me. Running on a treadmill, track, or on the street had no appeal whatsoever for me, and I thought only muscle heads lifted weights. Even when I worked out with the fitness trainers we hired to whip the guys in the group into shape for a tour, I dreaded it.

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS BE WILLING TO
HELP YOURSELF
.

You may feel the same way about exercise. Nobody can make you turn off the PlayStation and go to the Y to workout. You have to want to do it because there is a payback—something pleasurable, worthwhile or beneficial that outweighs the thrill of the joystick or the comfort of the couch.

“Not dying” was the incentive that finally ignited my enthusiasm for exercise. Radical, right? I also figured out that there are ways to build strength and stamina that aren’t mind-numbingly boring. Instead of running on a treadmill or jogging, I play basketball for a couple hours. Even weight training doesn’t suck if I do it listening to music or with friends who make it fun. Competition always psychs me up more than just working out by myself.

When it seemed like I couldn’t knock off the last twenty pounds or so, weight training made all the difference. You shouldn’t worry about how much you can lift. It’s more about repetitions and resistance. That’s what helps you lower body fat. Sure muscle weighs more than fat, but your body will be toned so you will look and feel much better too.

My trainer friends say that when you replace fat with muscle it also cranks up your metabolism so you burn more fat and calories even when you aren’t working out. They told me that for every pound of muscle added through lifting weights, I’d burn off as much as one hundred calories more per day.

If you’ve never worked out with a trainer before, I recommend that you schedule at least one session just so you can learn the proper techniques and be safe. You want to get the maximum rewards for your work, and there is a danger of hurting yourself if you don’t learn how to exercise muscle groups correctly. Most trainers will tell you, for example, that you should work your legs one day, then give them a couple of days to rest before working those big muscles again.

One thing that really surprised me was that lifting weights had a much bigger impact on my attitude and self-confidence than I’d anticipated. I’ve had friends who were big bodybuilders, and they carried themselves with a lot of self-assurance. Once I began to feel stronger and tighter in my arms, shoulder and chest, I understood where that confidence came from. It’s a great feeling.

When I first felt and saw the difference in my body, my attitude changed. There is a high that comes with fitness, and it is addictive to a degree. Your body craves it, and that’s a good thing. Weight training and cardio exercise not only helps you look better, they also release those really cool endorphins and neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine, that are thought to block pain and cause feelings of euphoria. Building muscle also increases testosterone, and when you’ve been in a boy band as long as I have, you can never get enough of that!

“NOT DYING” WAS THE INCENTIVE THAT FINALLY
IGNITED MY ENTHUSIASM
FOR EXERCISE.

Don’t think of exercise as
working out
. Instead, think of it as replacing an unhealthy “high” with a healthy one. I drank and did drugs because I was stressed, angry or bored—all the usual reasons. But the truth is that getting wasted only creates more problems. The next morning I was still stressed, angry, or bored—and I also felt like ten miles of dirt road had been dumped down my throat.

Going to the gym, running, lifting weights, playing basketball, taking hikes, riding bicycles, and other forms of exercise trigger the body’s natural stimulants, giving you a healthy high that actually reduces stress and anger, alleviates boredom, and enhances your immune system, helping you sleep better, recover from injuries quicker, and live longer.

Even better: No dry mouth! No pounding headaches! No destroyed brain cells! What a deal!

A certified professional trainer can help you find the fitness regimen best for you. Your local health club, YMCA/YWCA, or area schools offer programs for every body type and budget. If you prefer to exercise at home, I used
Bodybuilding.com
to create a workout and to track my progress, and I found it really helped keep me on a schedule.

THERE IS A HIGH THAT COMES WITH
FITNESS
, AND IT IS ADDICTIVE TO A DEGREE.

Since I’ve committed to a healthier lifestyle, I’ve been struck by the insanity of my past behavior. I was a genius at coming up with rationalizations for my binge drinking, drug use, smoking, and junk-food habit. Why was it so easy to make excuses for self-destructive behavior but not easy to exercise and eat right? Why did I think doing Ecstasy was a better reward than listening to my favorite music while working out?

CHANGE FOR THE BETTER

Creating a healthier lifestyle is all about replacing what can weaken or even kill you with activities that extend your life and make it more enjoyable. This can include changing your diet and your activities as well as your attitude, your friends and your environment.

I’m about as stubborn as they come, as you’ve probably noticed. It took the threat of death before I finally made a real commitment to curbing my drinking and drug use, eating healthier, and getting fit. Therapy also helped change my way of thinking. Hopefully, it won’t take as much to get your life on a better path. Having a positive attitude is not a sure cure or the answer to all of life’s problems. But it is so much better than a negative, self-defeating, self-pitying attitude.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating: the only way your life will change for the better is if you begin from the inside out. If you are unhappy and unfulfilled, look inside. Clear out the negative thinking, the old hurts, and resentments and bitterness that have led to bad decisions in the past. Make the choice to make a change in your attitude. Use whatever motivation is available to you, but use it to take positive actions that make you feel better about yourself.

I’M ABOUT AS
STUBBORN
AS THEY COME.

Getting out of the Hollywood party environment was a major step in the right direction for me. I’ve stayed away from my old Tampa social circles, too. I mean no disrespect to those friends, but the old ways I engaged in were bad for me. I wasn’t strong enough to resist the temptations that came with those people, and the places where we hung out.

Cool Springs is a much healthier environment for me. Bad temptations aren’t nearly as prevalent. I don’t have to use all sorts of energy just to stay out of trouble. I can relax. My Tennessee friends are more about music and family and spiritual things. They make me want to be a better person. They are the type of friends I need at this point in my life, and probably for the rest of my life, too.