Resist! Resist!

     What is now called “resistance training” used to be called “weight training” or “bodybuilding”. It seems that people thought this was something difficult, or something that would give them ugly, bumpy muscles, so in the interest of political correctness, the activity has been renamed.

     The three components of exercise are aerobic activity (like running), resistance training (lifting some sort of weight), and flexibility. Aerobic activity has been demonstrated to be good for your heart. It improves your mood, too. Resistance training has been shown to be good for your bones and muscles and heart. And your mood. And it helps you get a good night’s sleep, although some experts recommend that you not do it too close to bedtime.

     I don’t have money to pay for a personal trainer or a gym membership, and I don’t have time to drive a minimum half-hour each way to the nearest gym, nor the money for the gas to get there. Not everyone has a car, either. Luckily, you can do resistance training right in the comfort of your own home. It would be better if you could get a lesson or two with a pro, but if you can’t, you can’t. There are a few low-cost ways to be sure you are using proper form in your training. There are lots of exercise magazines on the newsstands. If you are seeing a chiropractor or physiotherapist, ask him or her to give you a few pointers. Another thing you could do is to borrow a few exercise DVD’s from the local library, or from a friend. Look at the tv listings; maybe there are exercise programs that you could watch. And of course, there is the internet; check out Pinterest.

      You do not need a full set of big, heavy weights. In fact, very good results are obtained from the use of light weights and many repetitions, and there is less chance of injury. Light weights are easy to find around the house; a 600 ml bottle of water weighs about a pound and a half. That’s enough to start with. With these light weights, you can do (for example) biceps curls, and triceps kickbacks, and overhead presses, and lateral lifts. Start easy, and increase the number of repetitions gradually. You can do flyes, and reverse flyes, and skullcrushers. You can look up all of  these on the Internet, to see how to do them.

     In addition to using light weights, you can use your body. One of the best resistance exercises it the good ol’ push-up. Do it with your knees bent, to protect your back. Do just a few, with control and really good form, and work up from there.

    Crunches used to be called “sit ups”, and are good for the whole body. In the old days we tended to stick our legs out straight on the floor, maybe anchored under furniture or a partner, and therefore we hurt our lower backs. Don’t do that. Lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor and your arms crossed on your chest and slowly, with control, use your abdominal muscles to raise your head and shoulders off the floor. No violent throwing yourself forward. Lift as far as you can and then gently lower your shoulders and head down again. Do a couple to start. Increase the numbers gradually.

      That is enough to think about for one day. We will revisit this topic. Often. Keep up the good work! We’ve got your back!      

Bless Your Heart -- Exercise!

Bless Your Heart – Exercise!

     It is pretty much accepted that 30 minutes of exercise each day will go a long way to improving the health of your heart.

     Sometimes it seems that our lives are so busy that we cannot possibly squeeze in another 30 minutes of anything, let alone exercise, which we probably won’t like anyway. Sometimes we have to trick ourselves for our own good.

     Some folks like to just jump right into whatever they are going to do, and start as they mean to go on -- that is, really, really, just give ‘er, eh. This is great, so exciting and determined. But sometimes this type of a gung ho beginning just peters out after a few days, and then we feel bad because we started with high hopes, and now have nothing to show for it. Why not start slowly with what we can comfortably do, and build up to our ultimate exercise goal? This approach often gives longer-lasting results.

     For starters, you could watch your favourite 30-minute TV show while standing up, instead of while sitting down; or you could sit on a balance ball. You could watch that TV show not only standing up but walking in place. There, now you have 30 minutes of activity and it did not disrupt your schedule at all.

     Studies have shown that people who have dogs tend to get more exercise than people who don’t. If you have a dog, take it for two 15-minute walks each day. There’s 30 minutes of exercise for you – and for him. Don’t go out and get a dog just because it might encourage you to exercise more. You might ask a neighbour if you could take his/her dog for a couple of walks a day. You might volunteer at an animal shelter; their dogs really need human contact and exercise, too.

     You could go for a couple of 15-minute walks a day by yourself. Go to the end of your walkway. Turn left (or right). Walk for 7 or 8 minutes. Turn around and walk home. There; that was a 15-minute walk. Do it again later in the day, and you’ll have 30 minutes of exercise. Hopefully you’ll get used to it, and maybe swap your two 15-minute sessions for one 30-minute walk. You are on your way to better health already!

Macronutrients? Micronutrients? What???

Macronutrients? Micronutrients? What???

      Fats, proteins and carbohydrates. You have probably heard of these. These are known as “macronutrients”. Your body needs all of these macronutrients in order to keep you alive.  Leave out a macronutrient for too long, and your health will take a dramatic downturn. “Micronutrients” are vitamins, minerals and fibre. You have probably heard of these, too.  Micronutrients have various functions in the body. Generally, it is thought that more micronutrients means better health, and fewer micronutrients means poorer health. Things that grow tend to be good sources of micronutrients, like broccoli. Things that are processed tend to be poor sources of micronutrients, like potato chips.

     Some “health” articles advise you to get rid of one or more macronutrients from your diet. Get rid of fats. Get rid of carbs. You have heard this. It is a very simplistic approach to nutrition, to say the least. You need all of the macronutrients. You need some fats, and some protein, and some carbohydrates. That is the truth. It is entirely possible that, in our modern society, we consume too much of one or another of these, more than is needed for health. Or maybe we just consume too much food, period.

     Now about calories. A calorie is a unit of heat, representing the amount of energy a particular food will give you (to be used by the body, or to be stored as bodyfat), or the amount of energy you will expend doing a particular exercise. Although there is some scientific basis to this calorie business, in most cases the numbers are thrown around haphazardly by the so-called experts that I tend to refer to as the “talking heads” . You see these people on TV telling what their particular magic-potion-of-the-day is that will instantly improve your life and your health. These numbers are useful mostly as a basis for comparison, such as, you will burn more calories walking than you will sitting still. You will take in more calories eating potato chips than you will drinking water.  You will no doubt take in more calories eating potato chips for half an hour than you will burn if you take a half-hour walk.

     The “calories in – calories out” theory of diet and exercise says that you need to “burn” more calories than you take in, in order to lose weight. You would need to expend 3500 more calories than you consume in order to lose one pound of bodyfat. While I am not disputing the truth of these statements, I do object to the way this information is usually put into practice. The supermarket shelves are now full of “diet” products, lo-cal this and that, which the commercials present to us as tasty and desirable and “only 100 calories!”, implying that we can eat all we want and be happy and thin. Well, not quite, in my opinion.

     This brings us back to the macronutrients and micronutrients. Fats are not bad. Carbohydrates are not bad. Proteins are not good. These things are just essential.  Micronutrients are essential. Try to choose your foods so that you get a lot  -- and a good variety -- of vitamins, minerals and fibre from the foods that you eat. Sometimes you can use the labels on foods to determine this, but sometimes you need to use reference materials such as the “Nutrition Almanac” to discover which micronutrients are in which foods.  Corrine T. Netzer’s “The Complete Book of Food Counts” will give you the macronutrients, sodium, cholesterol, fibre and calories in a wide array of foods, but no vitamins or minerals.

     What to eat, for maximum health? Here is a helpful equation:  health equals micronutrients divided by calories. What this means is that, for good health, you should choose foods that have lots of micronutrients (basically vitamins, minerals, and fibre) and these foods should have few calories. The more micronutrients there are, and the fewer calories there are, the healthier you will be. For example, a baked yam would give you a big number of micronutrients divided by a relatively small number of calories, which would equal a bigger number for health. This would be a bigger number (and therefore better health) than would result from a bag of potato chips, which would provide a small number of micronutrients divided by a big number of calories.

Bullies Blame The Victim

BULLIES BLAME THE VICTIM

     “Don’t you have any will power at all??!!?” You might have heard this a time or two. I know I have. And did you refrain from smacking the person who said it? That just proves that you DO have willpower.

     I don’t care much for television programs where folks are abused and berated for being overweight or out of shape, or for not eating properly. Seriously, if we could do better, we would. Verbal abuse is not likely to be a good motivator for most people; after all, most of us have had our share already, and here we are, still stuck in the same place.

     There is so much information floating around that sometimes we get overwhelmed. Unless we really concentrate, it is difficult to differentiate between what is advertising, what is cutting-edge research, what is common sense, and what will work for us. Personally, I have lost hundreds of pounds on virtually every diet out there, and every pound comes back – and brings a few friends. Short-term diets and exercise programs will not work in the long-term. The only solution is a permanent lifestyle change. For myself, the best solution was found in a book by Rick Gallop called “The G I Diet”. The basis of this is the Glycemic Index, which measures the speed at which you digest specific foods and convert them to glucose, which your body uses for energy. Or stores as fat. I had a lot of success with this lifestyle change, eating foods which were low on the Glycemic Index and high in fiber. Complex carbs were a mainstay, with wheat, oats, barley and spelt leading the way. In a year I lost 75 pounds, and the next year I lost another 15 pounds. Most of it stayed off!  Then along came my doctor’s orders to remove all gluten from my diet. There went my favourites! Replacing them with gluten-free products sent me into a high-Glycemic Index tailspin. Here’s why.

     Sometimes it seems that foods – particularly ones that are not too healthy for us – just jump into our mouths. That shows that we have poor impulse control when it comes to food; it does not mean that we have no willpower. It doesn’t mean we are bad or weak; according to Kathleen DesMaisons in “Potatoes not Prozac”, some of us are suffering from sugar sensitivity. We get a very pleasurable chemical reaction in our brain when we eat sugary foods, or foods laden with refined carbohydrates  -- a reaction similar to that caused by addictive drugs. The more of these foods we eat, the more we want. DesMaisons has shown this to be a measurable physical response in the brain.  The solution?  Remove from your diet those foods which are high on the Glycemic Index . I had done that, and then when I had to remove the gluten-laden, high-fiber foods that I was used to, the substitutions put me right back into a sugar spiral.

     Here’s what has to happen next. Gradually remove all sugar (and those simple carbs that act like sugar in the body) from the diet. “The G I Diet” can be a big help here, since it also recommends lots of veggies and fruits, high fiber, and little fat. It is possible to leave out the gluten-bearing foods, and choose ones that are gluten-free; however, to learn the difference, you’ll need to do some extensive  research, which is another topic.

     Once you “get clean”, it is important to stay that way. It’s like an addiction; if you have a little, you’ll need a lot. We cannot help the way our brains are wired. It is not our fault. We can, however, take control of the situation and improve our lives by gradually “cleaning up” our diet, and, once we get there, staying “clean”.  It can be a long process, and we need a lot of support while we are doing this, because often the folks around us can gobble up anything they want with no weight gain, no mood changes, no health repercussions, no problems at all. And we can’t. Boo hoo. Well, we just have to be cheerleaders for each other as we battle for improved health.  Keep your stick on the ice. We’re all pullin’ for ya!