• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Spring is here! Through the harsh SoCal winter, we have lain dormant in our cocoons of excess clothing. Now, like the proverbial caterpillar, our time has come to bloom into butterflies (like the ones tattooed on the small of our backs).

Of course, if you’re a freshman, by this time you’ve bloomed an extra 15 pounds. For many, our first magical fall in Westwood brought with it the discovery of no exercise, all-you-can-eat dorm food and cheap beer at frat parties. Before you know it, it’s swimsuit season again, and like that stupid “Cathy” newspaper cartoon (you know the one: the annoying, middle-aged single lady that ends up eating the chocolates/brownies/fudge in the last panel while her mother/dog sighs), you’re in full panic mode.

Which is why I dedicate my first spring column to general health and wellness.

Hector doesn’t only provide in-depth, hard-core sports analysis; he also brings you his secret for tight glutes and to-die-for abs in time for summer!

You ready? Lean close, now. So the secret is: get some doggone exercise and pass on the Doritos, you doggone pig-animal!

Oh, ha ha. Just joshin’. It’s just me, Hector the kidder. Ha ha.

But no. Really.

I had friends that went on the “soup diet,” the “grapefruit diet” and the “don’t eat anything that might get incorporated into the body diet,” with no results.

Balancing the delicious with the nutritious is definitely difficult-icious.

There are no magic tricks to a healthy body unless your magic trick involves lots of running and cutting back on second helpings of Little Debbies, which might be healthy, but that’s a pretty sucky magic trick if you ask me.

I yearn for the simpler days of my “dinosaur diet.” It consisted of me picking whichever food had a picture of dinosaurs on the packaging. There were no complications like “food pyramids” or “dietary needs” or “grams per serving”.

It was simple: T. rex or Velociraptor on the front – good. My Little Pony? Hah! Maybe for my kid sister! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Well, there you get a slightly more nuanced distinction, but I erred on the side of awesome since they fought Karate.

In high school, my “Taco Boy (which made all other taco-derived name restaurants bow down) carne asada burrito diet” got balanced out by water polo and swimming year-round. I could down two of those bad boys easily, and yet maintain my svelte figure with just a few laps.

Then came UCLA dorm life. The thing with me is that when I don’t exercise, I lose weight, not gain it. My arms get skinny and frail, and I get a potbelly. It gives the illusion that my head has gotten bigger. I came home for the summer after freshman year, and when I got my cholesterol checked, it had gone way up.

So I made lifestyle changes. I joined the gym, added cardio to my lift-curls-in-front-of-the-mirror-while-sneering regimen, and cooked for myself. Back at school, I made it a point to go to the gym or run the perimeter every morning, eat the healthy alternatives at the dorm, and surround myself with positive energy.

My alcohol consumption also became more discriminating. Pass on the Pabst; only the finest of sherries for this fella.

When I told my friend in St. Paul, Minn., Samuel “Sam” Nalle, about my plan, he was less than supportive. See, Sam is somewhat “old-fashioned.”

“Oh you Hollywood crazy hippies with your dangfangled new-age yogas and fancy shmancy sparkling mineral waters and hoighty toity movie stars,” he said.

So I explained to Sam that I wasn’t degrading his blue-collar lifestyle. Yes, sometimes a little boozey booze is just the prescription to treat a case of the “squares,” but there’s got to be moderation. And taste.

The key is to enjoy life holistically. And life is more rad when you’ve got the biceps to complement your totally original barbed wire/tribal tattoo when shirtless at the beach.

Months ago, I wrote about my friend Kevin in Buffalo, N.Y., who’s undergoing heavy treatment for leukemia. He’ll be in the hospital for the next month for a bone marrow transplant, so if you would like to send some e-wishes to make him feel better, e-mail hleano@media.ucla.edu.