Fit by 60! - TomO's Pledge

Well, I appear to be on the downward swing of my plateau -- went down to 243.0 today. My goal for March is 242.0, so I have a good shot at making it!

Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous - 72 degrees, partly sunny with a ver light layer of clouds. Took my dog Chaco (a 2 1/2 yr. old Welsh Corgi) to the dog park, where he ran for an hour with his big dog pals. What a blast to watch him there! After that, since it was my "off" day, I took a 3 mile walk along the beach at Torrey Pines. I feel so lucky living near that beach (5 min. away) -- it's like I'm on permanent vacation.

Today I thought I'd write down my thoughts about supporting others who are in this struggle.

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Giving advice and encouragement is always a problematic thing on the web. First, you don't really know the people you're talking to. I have quite a few "virtual friends" and I'm always surprised how little I really knew them if I get a chance to meet them in person. Second, it's very easy to misconstrue what someone has written in a post. Are they venting? Do they really want help? Do they think your advice sucks? You never really know for sure.

So it's a real crapshoot, that's for sure.

However, on sites like this, part of the way people get their motivation is by helping others -- passing along what they know in the hopes that it may encourage another.

It's all good when you basically agree with someone, and you're just encouraging them to do more of the same. But what if someone asks about something that may harm them? Do you keep your mouth shut? Do you only speak up if they specifically ask for YOUR help? Or do you just fire away?

Sometimes it helps to think of these questions in a different environment. Suppose you're in the gym, and you're part of a group of people who have come together to support each other and learn from each other regarding weight training.

You see someone doing "momentum curls" - the bicep curls where the person is recruiting their whole body to do the curl, ignoring form all together to make a show of the weight they're curling. While it looks stupid, it probably won't hurt that person. Do you say anything? Well, maybe -- if you're an acquantance of that person, or that person has specifically asked you for advice. If it's just a stranger, you'd probably keep your mouth shut.

Now you see someone about to do a deadlift. They're obviously not that strong, and they've got 2 45lb. plates loaded on each end of a barbell. They're about to pull up, and you notice their back is completely rounded, and that that's how they intend to do the deadlift. You can almost hear their back go out. Do you say anything? In that case, yes -- even if you don't know the person. Remember, this is a fictional group in the gym, something akin to this forum. By belonging to the group. people have signalled that they want advice and support.

The deadlifter might be angry and tell you to go f*#&# yourself, but it would be almost irresponsible to keep quiet.

Now let's move back to this forum, where people sign up to get both support AND advice. Someone asks you about a supplement that costs $60 a month, promises to take the weight off quickly, and is nothing more than caffeine and green tea. Is this a case of the momentum curler or the deadlifter?

I say it's a case of the deadlifter about to do serious injury to themselves. Why? Because these quack remedies enforce some habits that really are dangerous, specifically:

1) it reinforces the idea that weight loss and fitness are external factors, to be solved with a pill or a "magic diet." [I'm not talking here about morbidly obese people or those with thyroid problems, a tiny minority of all of us].

2) Because these remedies ultimately fail 95% of the time, they reinforce helplessness. And failure typically leads to gaining all the weight back, plus some.

3) They fill the coffers of the diet-hucksters, thus enabling them to bamboozle thousands more victims.

So, just as I would pull someone back if they were about to step off the curb in the path of a moving bus, I feel it's only responsible to warn participants in this forum about quack cures that ultimately will harm them. That doesn't mean that I'd advocate going into a forum especially set up for them, but if they came in a general forum and asked about a quack diet, I would speak up.

I know what's coming next -- what makes you the expert? I'm no doctor; I'm not a nutrionist. In fact, I ask for lots of advice myself. But after 40 years and lots of reading coupled with empirical experience, I'm able to smell a fraud a bit better. And frauds always have a few things in common:

1) They NEVER have double-blind studies in peer reviewed journals. They ALWAYS refer to some "clinically controlled" study where people popping their pills lose more than those taking placebos.
2) They invariable refer to some new "discovery" or "ingredient" that is the magic bullet that no one else has discovered yet.
3) They alway promise very quick results. After all, if losing weight was hard work, who would buy their product?

So if you post in a general forum that you've started on your path, and the way you're doing it is by taking SuperDuperSlim 9000 pills, you won't get a whole lot of encouragement from me. Now you know why.
 
Weight today: 243.2

Yesterday's workout: CardioCoach V6 (Candace) on the precor elliptical
Made some improvements, as follows.

Challenge 1 - 5 sprints, 1 min. long, w. 1 min. rest
Level 12 last time & this time
Speed increased from 185 rpm to 200 rpm
HR bpm last time = 143; this time = 153

Challenge 2 - 5 sprints 30 sec. long w. 40 sec. rest
Level 12 both times
Speed increased from 190 rpm to 230 rpm
HR bpm 147 on 1st, 155 by 5th

Challenge 3 - 1 - 3 min climb
1st 2 min. at level 14 @ 130 rpm, 145 bpm (no improvement)
3rd min. at level 16 - last time at 110 rpm, this time at 130 rpm

Challenge 4 - 3 2 min. climbs + 1 min. sprint, 2 min. rest
1st 2 min. 145-147 bpm, level 13 @ 130 rpm (no improvement)
3rd min. 155 - 159 bpm, level 12 @ 180 rpm, this time at 190 rpm

Overall, improvement in quite a few places. 1,000 calories burned.

Food yesterday was at a 4 out of 5 for quality, around 2,700 calories, giving a deficit of around 400 for the day.

And now for today's rant . . .
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On Fitness Ignorance

For most of my life, I've been ignorant about metabolism, weight, calories, fitness, and health. Look through any forum on the internet, and you'll see that I'm not alone. Everywhere, people are desperate to lose weight, and everywhere we are failing.

Why?

I'm beginning to think the biggest reason is ignorance. And because we're ignorant, we accept false solutions that lead to failure -- fad diets, magic pills, spot reducing, and thousands of other quack remedies. The medical profession all to often participates in this fraud, either turning a blind eye to the most egregious "cures", if not promoting them actively.

To be sure, there are also a bunch of medical professionals who HAVE fought the good fight, exposing the quackery that permeates the diet and fitness industry. But they appear to be in the minority. Because this is a multi-billion dollar industry, and we would rather protect private enterprise, even in its vilest forms, than the health of our citizenry, we continue to take no more than a "caveat emptor" approach to every facet of it.

The outcome of this is that obesity, and all the disease stemming from it, more and more will contribute to the crisis in our medical care system. Who will foot the bill. Why, our children of course!

They don't know that yet. Many of them don't even vote. But if they had any idea what a catastrophe we have prepared for them, they would be furious. Instead of buying homes and paying for college educations for their kids, they will be paying off our national debt.

In most industries, knowledge and profit are synergistic. But not in the nutrition/weight loss industry. Here, the main way to make money is through the perpetuation of ignorance. Why? Because there is nothing that "magic" or "spectacular" about the "secret" to losing weight. You can't patent the concept of energy balance, good and wholesome food, and exercise. It doesn't have any "pizazz," yet that is what real weight loss is all about.

If we were smart as a society, we would start requiring elementary and middle schools to teach kids about basal metabolic rates, fat percentages, lean body mass, calories from food, calories expended in exercise, and energy balance. We would make it so every kid in middle school would realize why starvation is not the way to lose weight. We would guarantee that every high school graduate, even if they were overweight, would know how to figure out a good program to get healthy again.

I know this sounds like a pipe dream. But for 15 years, many of our politicians pretended that global warming didn't exist either. Now even died in the wool conservatives realize our planet is in danger and we need to do something about it. Hopefully, the consequences of the obesity epidemic will get society to take a different attitude toward this problem as well -- before it's too late.
 
TomO said:
Problem is, I'll be past 60 by then! :eek:
Not too many old geezers like me still doing squats!
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The norm does not = correctness, especially in this case. We live in a day in age where people think it is normal to feel worn down in their later years. Disease and medications are supposed to accompany your lifestyle after you pass 50, and this number is progressively reducing as time goes on. Quite scary is you ask me.

People don't realize that by staying active, being fit, eating right, life is a completely different experience from the norm.

Problem is, since so few people realize this, the norm dictates the mass's actions. That is why places like this are so great. :)
 
Steve said:
People don't realize that by staying active, being fit, eating right, life is a completely different experience from the norm.

Problem is, since so few people realize this, the norm dictates the mass's actions. That is why places like this are so great. :)
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Absolutely right.

Say, I got a question for you, Steve. My wife finally decided to start with a weight training program and start watching her eating more.

I had her start on a program somewhat like mine, only with much lower weights.

For squats, she is just using the bar (40 lbs.). However, she says she can't go down very far because it starts hurting her knee.

Should she keep doing them, even though they're 1/3 squats? Or should she do something else?
 
TomO said:
Last night, I and my lovely wife Marlene, with whom I've been together for 33 years, went out to dinner to celebrate our 23 year old daughter's new job. She noted that I really had a different attitude about losing weight and getting healthy this time. She said it didn't seem nearly as "gimmicky" or "temporary." She also asked me this: "If you had to give someone a '10 point manifesto' about losing weight, what would those 10 points be?"

I thought that was a good question. Here was my answer, based on the 10 things that I found most important to me.

1) Learn about the energy equation that runs your body. It's not as simple as "calories in and calories out." You have to learn about your basal metabolic rate, the calories you use for exercise, and the calories you consume in food and drink.

2) Get support. Getting healthy is not just a matter of will power. You need to find a group of people that you can share your triumphs and frustrations with. Some days, you will get motivation by helping them. Other days they will motivate you. It doesn't matter whether your support group is on the internet or at work or part of some other group, as long as it's there.

3) Develop an exercise program that includes both cardio and weight training. Sure, you can lose weight without it, but it's much harder, and you drastically reduce the odds of long term success if you don't exercise. On top of that, exercise creates the counterpart of a vicious circle -- let's call it a life circle. It makes you stronger, so you feel like doing more, and in doing more, you burn more calories.

4) Get serious about educating yourself. There is SO much crap out there -- about "spot reducing", about fad diets, miracle solutions, and every other trick under the sun. Ignorance will surely make you a victim.

5) Develop long and short term goals. First, develop a long term goal that's reasonable and attainable. You don't climb Mt. Everest in a day, and you won't lose the 100 lbs. you gained over 5 years in one year. But the long term goal is not enough. You have to break it down into short term goals. They could revolve around weight, but they also can be about other aspects of your health -- blood pressure, resting pulse, strength, etc.

6) Publicize your goals. Don't make it easy for you to slip by. Involve your support group in helping you meet your goals. Be accountable.

7) Don't beat yourself up over setbacks. We all fall off the wagon now and then. Just dust yourself off, get back on the wagon, and continue your journey.

8) Gauge your progress by your past, not by other people. The point is not whether you look like someone else or are as fit as your co-worker. The point is really if you look better than you did last month, and are more fit than you were last month.

9) Embrace the complexity and difficulty of the process. It's not a simple matter of will power, as that supplement-bar huckster Dr. Phil would have you believe. It's a personal thing, a social thing, an educational thing, a psychological thing. It's tough. It's a battle that's fought on many fronts.

10) Each and every day, celebrate the fact that YOU have made the commitment to get healthy. That alone puts you ahead of the majority of people, skinny or not.
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Excellent post Tom!
 
Workout log - 3/5/2007

My workout for today:

Barbell Squat: 150#, 5 x 5, difficulty = 2
Incline Dumbbell Press: 65 x 2, 5 x 5, difficulty 3
Deadlift: 130#, 5 x 5, difficulty 2
Barbell Row: 80#, 5 x 5, difficulty 2
Ezbar Curl: 60#, 2 x 5 difficulty 1
70#, 3 x 5, difficulty 2
Ezbar Tricep Ext.: 60#, 2 x 5, difficulty 1
70 #, 3 x 5, difficulty 2
Total Time: 50 min., 575 calories.

Stairmaster: 25 min @ speed 6, avg. pulse 125, 425 calories

Total workout: 1 hr. 15 min., 1,000 calories

Comments:
1) Squats and deadlifts on the same day are tough!
2) The incline DB press at 65# each was tough - failed on the last rep of the last set. Much harder than doing 130# with a barbell.
3) Decided to add ezbar curl and tricep ext., even though Steve said no to these -- mainly because I like to do them! :D
4) 70# on ezbar curl best so far this year.
 
Tuesday, March 6, 2007

:( Weight: 244.2 -- Plateau #2, Day 17 :( :( :(

On Sunday, Marlene decided to get a bit more serious about losing some weight. We figured out her resting metabolic rate (RMR) together, her body fat pctg. (using calipers), and where she wanted to be. It was interesting to note that during the summer, she put on 6 pounds, but her diet and exercise hadn't changed at all. Then we realized she walks about 5 miles a day in the classroom. That comes to 1,750 calories a week, or the caloric equivalent of 6 pounds over the summer. Mystery solved!

So she's going to try to cut out 250 calories a day from her diet, and we're going to try and add 250 calories a day from exercise, giving her a 500 calorie deficit. Two days a week, she's going to add a full-body weight training program, which is just a modified version of mine. The other 5 days, we'll walk our dog at night for 30 minutes.

Last night was the first test. We had just finished our steak and vegetable stir fry with whole wheat noodles, and the temptation to relax and watch TV was almost overwhelming. But we got off our butts and took the walk.

And now for today's rant. . .
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I HATE PLATEAUS!!​

Some people have nice, steadily downward weight loss paths. I'm not one of them. Oh sure, the first 20 pounds went like that, but then I hit my first plateau. That one lasted 5 weeks. It started out with a "tease", when I went from 248 to 244. The next day, it was still at 244. Then bang! - back up to 248. And there the scale stayed, ricocheting from 247 to 248 for 32 days.

On day 33: 245!

Plateau #2 is shaping up the same way. The tease came about 12 days ago, when the scale went all the way down to 241.5. It even stayed down there for a couple of days. And then, dammit, back up to 244, where it hasn't really budged since then.

And if anything, I've been even MORE careful this past two weeks. I've logged everything into FitDay. I've kept a careful spreadsheet. I have a whole new weight training routine. If anything, I've added to my exercise routine, averaging 1,000 calories per workout. So far in March, I've run a 3,500 calorie deficit.

But the scale doesn't move.

If I hadn't been through this so many times over the past 40 years, I'd be turning to one of those "miracle" solutions about now. This is why the makers of caffeine and ephedra based products get rich. They know damn well that lots of people reach plateaus. And then they get frustrated. And then they get desperate. And then they grasp for magic solutions.

And this is why 95% of all people who lose weight put it back on. They reach a plateau, give up, and become convinced that they just weren't meant to lose weight. After they've gained back all the weight they lost, they get depressed at their failure. Their health turns to crap. Then they read about some new diet in a "health" magazine. Like trained rats, they get back on the treadmill.

Does it sound like I'm speaking from personal experience here?

This time around, I'm not making those bastards rich. I'll eventually get through this plateau, just like I cracked plateau #1. I know I'm doing all the right things. Patience and resolve is the name of the game.
 
way to go for the after dinner walk - probably better for your relationship too than just sitting on the couch vegging in front of the tv :) very nice :)

plateaus break - not giving up is the crucial thing...
 
OK, finished with boring cardio. 65 min., 850 calories, avg. HR 120.

Took it pretty easy today because of the tough workout yesterday -- slight DOMS from the deadlifts.

Tomorrow is OFF day!

Interesting - when the elliptical machine showed 1,000 calories, my heart rate monitor only showed 850. I wonder how many people out there are ordering some extra fudge on their double mocha latte because they thought they burned more calories than they really did?
 
Hey TomO, I finally made it in here to see what you are all about. Good read I might add. You definatly have the motivation that it takes. And I'm glad you are getting your wife involved because changing your lifestyle is so much easier when you can make everybody around you change right along with you. I guess its easier for me, I have complete and total control over my son so he has to eat what I put on the table.
Your excersize routine is so precise, thats what I think I like most about your program. I could only wish for a few hours a day to just work out. I manage, but not often enough. My dream is for my gym to have pee wee soccer right after I get off work...I can dream...right...
Keep up the great work TomO, your tacking the years back onto your life!
 
i really love the fact that you and your wife are doing this together! and i really like the fact that she is a teacher! teachers are the best people, so i've heard! :)

sorry about the sucky plateau - just don't give up! and i know you won't! :) you provide so much knowledge and great advice around here!
 
Iwan naloseit said:
Your excersize routine is so precise, thats what I think I like most about your program.
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Thanks, Iwan. I owe a big debt to Steve, who helped me a LOT with the weight training part of my program.

daiseeangel said:
i really love the fact that you and your wife are doing this together! and i really like the fact that she is a teacher! teachers are the best people, so i've heard! :)
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Yes, they are, except for the husbands of teachers! :p :p
 
Wed., March 7, 2007

Weight: 243.4 - Plateau #2, Day #20

2nd night in a row Marlene and I went on a walk with our dog Chaco. She got her extra 250 calories in, and Chaco likes the walks. I don't count them in my exercise totals, because I don't think I burn more than a hundred calories or so.

No exercise today -- I've been going for 7 days straight, so it's time for a day off.

Still a bit sore from the weights in my traps and quads, but it'll go away by tomorrow, in time for my HIIT routine.

And now for today's rant . . .
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Personal Trainers​

Over the past 10 years, I've dealt with about 8 different personal trainers, so I can't claim to be an expert, but I've gotten to know how they work from first hand experience.

They have all been young, in very good shape, and enthusiastic. They genuinely supported my weight loss goals and helped me put together conditioning goals, however wrong they may have been. They knew how to use all the machines, and they all stressed the importance of good form.

Only one of them had me on a program of compound exercises (squats, clean & jerk, military press, etc.), but that was 8 years ago. At the time, I believed in the idea that you could be "fit and fat" and he argued with that concept. He told me about the high correlation of Type 2 diabetes with obesity, and the high prevalence of heart disease. He urged me to keep losing weight. But I didn't believe him.

Sometimes you're just not ready to listen to good advice.

Most of these trainers make pitifully little money. Gyms typically sell a lot of package deals, where you buy a dozen training sessions at once for a few hundred dollars. The gym takes their cut, and then the company the trainer works for takes theirs. The result? The trainer makes around $15 an hour.

Sure, you see trainers like the ones in "Work Out" who make $100 and more an hour -- but these are the exception. The average trainer in a gym generally has to work a second job just to live OK.

So it doesn't surprise me that what we generally get is poor advice. In fact, I have never, ever had a trainer help me as much as Steve has helped me, right here on this forum, for free. The right advice given in a few minutes always trumps the wrong advice dispensed over a period of months.

When I'm bored out of my gourd doing SS cardio, I spend the time looking at what trainers are doing with their clients. Most of them have a fair amount of weight to lose. They are not in very good shape. A few of them are my age, but most are younger.

I have yet to see a single trainer instruct their client on free weights. Strange -- don't they read the same stuff we do? Don't they realize that free weights are better than machines? You'd think from the standpoint of building in the necessity of more sessions, they'd teach their clients free weights. After all, it takes a fair amount of time to develop good form on free weights. And even if you do have good form, from time to time you'd like to have it checked out.

So I can only come to one of two conclusions: a) it's a liability issue, or b) they don't know how to use the free weights themselves. The liability issue could be that there's a perception that the potential for injury is higher than free weights than with machines, so they start with the machines.

In the short term, i.e. on the very first try, that may hold some water. For example, if you're on a chest press machine pushing up 20 lbs., there's no way anyone or anything could get hurt. If you're pushing up a barbell with a couple of 10 lb. plates on each end, the odds may be a tiny bit higher in favor of something bad happening.

If that is the reason, it's a pretty stupid one, though. In the long run, I think machines have the potential to injure you more. Using free weights, you recruit muscles you use in real life. When you lift a heavy box over your head to put it on a high shelf, what are you doing? A military press, of course. But if you've never done free weights, you haven't strenghened all the muscles involved in that action, so you could easily injure yourself. For example, you might start arching your back too much. If you had done standing military presses with a barbell, you would know not to do that.

As for the second reason -- well that would be just pathetic, but it might be the one.

On top of that, I'm amazed at some of the stuff trainers have their clients do, and not do.

For example, they never seem to have their overweight clients focus on compound exercises. Instead, they have them doing curls, calf raises, etc. They know people like to look at their biceps, so they make sure to stick exercises that focus on that muscle, even though it's a relatively small one. For women, they know that a lot of them are concerned about their butt and thighs, so invariably there are lots of exercises for the abductor, adductor, and glutes.

And of course, there is every conceivable form of ab exercise. I bet the average overweight client has never been told they will not see their ab muscles unless they drop their body fat percentage quite significantly.

None of them ever explained the concept of energy balance to me. You would think that would be the first thing they would do -- get your height, weight, body fat percentage, and then show you how to figure out your energy balance using resting metabolic rate, calories from exercise, and calories from food. You would think they would explain to you the role of cardio and weight training in your program. You would think they would explain how often you should eat, and what kinds of food you should eat.

That's never happened to me. Maybe it's because most people aren't receptive to that, but I doubt it.

Something like that would require that the first session be devoted almost entirely to talking about your program. People would think they were wasting their time.

If I owned a training company, I would do that part for free, as long as you purchased say, six hours of training. You would get an hour thrown in gratis, just to get you on a reasonable program that made sense.

Finally, I'm amazed at the "fads" trainers have their clients engage in. The current one seems to be the Swiss Ball. I've seen trainers have their clients do absolutely everything on the ball -- from chest presses to standing military presses. Yes, I actually saw a trainer trying to teach her client how to do a barbell standing military press, fortunately with no plates on the ends, but still a 40 lb. bar, while balancing on the ball. Maybe her client was an acrobat in the circus, but somehow I don't think so.

In the end, though, you get what you pay for. It's not like being a teacher, where society gets away with paying peanuts because so many teachers are altruistically driven. Trainers are generally not altruists. They're trying to make a living. And as soon as they really do know what they're doing, like the one trainer who taught me squats, deadlifts, and clean and jerks, they generally find a much better paying job. That trainer became the coach for a team at the local state college, doubling his salary in the process.
 
Very good write up Tom. I would say that 1 in 20 trainers are worthy. Worthy meaning, they truly care about their clients as well as furthering their own knowledge and experience.

The problem is this, IMO. Most gyms are corporate entities. They don't care about the level of competence their trainers possess. They care more about their marketability. They care more about how quickly they can move clients in and out each and every day. When you consider this, machines are the viable option. They take little education to use and they are easy.

Coupling the problem is this. There is such a lack of knowledge from the general public about proper lifestyle modification. They don't know how to eat, they don't know how to exercise, and they don't know how their bodies work. Without this knowledge, it is very easy for them to fall into the trap of a bad trainer. They truly believe that using some isolation machines a few times per week at most is going to solve their physical problems. You and I both know that this couldn't be further from the truth.

It is a very sad dilemma. It won't change until their is greater scrutiny put on the training industry. However, I doubt this will come anytime soon, since the people in charge, the owners of these fitness centers, mostly, do not care about how their members are being trained. The care more about how fast and efficiently they are being trained so they can get the next one in the door.

This is why I do not work in a gym. I used to. There were 20 trainers on staff, and it was a very nice gym. Problem was, 17 of the trainers were boobs. I couldn't stand being around them. After a while, it gets old trying to persuade them to better themselves in terms of learning.

The trainers who really care about fitness, and how to apply it to people looking to reach serious goals, they are the ones who tend to be "worthy." They want to know all that they can. The general trainer is not this though. I would say the average trainer is an athlete looking for a job that relates to sports and exercise. And most of these athletes don't even understand the sciences that back fitness and nutrition. Hell, most don't even realize that science is part of the equation.

That is why places like this are great. Every forum has a few people who actually do "know." And the word is spread. Makes me happy, I'll tell ya that.
 
Hey Tom,

Just wanted to stop by and read your diary. You have many interesting pointers and observations:) And its really great that both you and your wife take such an interest in health, because that is the ultimate goal. Its not only the weightloss that gets us feeling better, the healthy choices and exercise has more to do with it. Anyway, good job on you new lifestyle so far, and keep it up:)
 
my little gym is all about impressing us with the certifications that their trainers have.. I think I've been in technology and around paper tigers entirely too long.. I have more professional and technical certifications than pfizer makes erection pills... doesnt make me bill gates or even smart - just means i passed a test - i'm not sure the training certifications are any different -least i haven't been impressed by people with them yet.
 
Steve said:
Very good write up Tom. I would say that 1 in 20 trainers are worthy. Worthy meaning, they truly care about their clients as well as furthering their own knowledge and experience.

That is why places like this are great. Every forum has a few people who actually do "know." And the word is spread. Makes me happy, I'll tell ya that.
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Great points, Steve. You're absolutely right. It is just a business to them, and actually, the more people they get to sign up and then lose interest, the better off they are.

As for this forum, it's been a real godsend for me.
 
maleficent said:
my little gym is all about impressing us with the certifications that their trainers have.. I think I've been in technology and around paper tigers entirely too long.. I have more professional and technical certifications than pfizer makes erection pills... doesnt make me bill gates or even smart - just means i passed a test - i'm not sure the training certifications are any different -least i haven't been impressed by people with them yet.
Click to expand...

Yes, it's somewhat like software development in that respect. I can't tell you how many people I've met who have certificates up the wazoo and couldn't program their way out of a paper bag.
 
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