My First Heroes
Larry Broughman, Larry Freeman and my Uncle Grady were my first heroes. Larry and Grady were cool guys who rode motorcycles. Larry a BSA and Grady and my cousin, J.T., rode Triumphs. BSA, Norton and Triumph were the cool bikes in the 1960s. Harley hogs were fat and ugly until motorcycle gangs like the Hell’s Angels started to strip them down.
Broughman, Freeman, Uncle Grady and J.T were tough guys you didn’t push around. Since I had been pushed around for most of my life, I had an insatiable desire to be one of the tough guys.
Uncle Grady was six years older than me. When he graduated from high school in Alabama in 1962, he moved to Kenosha and got a job at American Motors. Grady loved to drink and hang out in the local bars. He and the others rode their motorcycles, and they would fight anybody, at anytime.
One night Grady and Larry Freeman were in a tavern. There was a big, cocky guy from Kenosha who got into a fight and was whipping one of the southern boys that night. He hollered out for everyone to hear: “I’ll whup (sic) you and all of your hillbilly friends.”
Then they all walked outside and Grady said, “Let me put my coat in the car and I’ll fight you.”
Grady went to his car and slipped on brass knuckles. He walked to the big guy and hit him on the jaw, knocking him down and out in the street.
Larry Freeman was also someone who wouldn’t back down or turn his back on anyone who wanted to fight. Freeman wasn’t a big guy, but he was unnaturally fearless. He would fight man or beast. He was about 5-foot-8 and boxed as a lightweight at 135 pounds. When he wasn’t boxing, he weighed about 160 pounds.
There was a fellow by the name of Ed who had won the Kenosha Golden Gloves tournament as a heavyweight. He was a big bully who weighed more than 300 pounds. One day he got into an argument with Freeman at a local garage. Ed tried to bully Freeman and they started scuffling. Ed grabbed Freeman by the throat and almost choked him unconscious. Larry was pinned against a counter and reached for something to stop Ed from choking him to death. His hand located a ball peen hammer on the counter behind him. He grasped the hammer, hit the behemoth and knocked him unconscious.
On another evening, Larry and my best friend Danny (Larry's cousin) were in a tavern and obviously had had too much to drink. Larry got into an argument about a pool game with another man who was about 6-foot-6 tall and weighed about 250 pounds. They went outside the bar and began to fight.
Larry and his adversary were wrestling around, and Larry was hollering instructions at Danny.
“Hit him Danny … hit him Danny.”
Every time Danny threw a punch to hit the huge target, the big man would lift Larry into the air as a shield. Danny would hit Larry by accident instead of his intended target. Danny and the big man were beginning to really hurt ol’ Larry. He desperately needed help. Fortunately for Larry, the police arrived, and not a minute too soon. They quickly stopped the assault.e fat by eating 10 apples per day (even though a single apple contains almost 100 calories), you will surely get fat by eating 10 burgers!
That is the basic difference! You need to avoid empty calories (that is, junk foods) and embrace negative calorie foods, such as fruits and vegetables. Now negative calorie doesn't mean that there is no calorie in these foods; it only means that in order to digest themselves, these foods will force your body to burn more calories than what they provide! This results in calorie deficit which will ultimately result in weight loss!
2. Muscle building is a must: Do you know that in order to maintain themselves, muscles burn a lot of your calories? This in effect means that the more lean muscles you have, the faster you will be able to lose weight! Eating protein-rich foods is a good way of building lean muscles; working out regularly in the gym is another. There is another yet advantage of eating protein-rich foods: you won't feel hungry too often; as such, the possibility of overeating is almost non-existent.
When you eat low-calorie foods, you are not able to build muscles; instead you LOSE muscles. When your body doesn't have enough lean muscles, it is not able to burn fat since your metabolic rate remains at an abnormally low level. So that is one more reason why low calorie diets don't work!
Most of these low calorie diets will only help you lose water and muscles; while you maybe misled into believing that you have actually lost several dozens of pounds, you have not lost the single most important thing that is keeping you from becoming slim: and that is FAT! Unless you lose fat, there is no way you can become fit!