Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Some Websites I Like (and Trust)

First, let me say that there are a lot of very questionable (and potentially dangerous) websites, and if you wind up making bad choices, you can hurt (or perhaps even kill) yourself. These sites are from sources that I believe to be reliable and I am not being paid to recommend them, so my recommendations are based strictly on my belief that they spread good and reliable information.

First, a couple of health related sites that make radio programs available in mp3 format. You can download these programs and play them back from a CD or mp3 player in your car, while you exercise, etc. They are:
www.drmirkin.com - the website of Dr. Gabe Mirkin, he has over 200 "hours" (actually about 35 minutes each with commercials removed) of his show (which went off the air in December 2003) posted to his website. While some of the information is dated, much still applies and it's very good info. Mirkin is a former national class runner and is today at nearly 70 a serious bicyclist. He often has his wife, Diana, a nutritionist, on the show to discuss food and eating issues.
www.cooperaerobics.com - this is Dr. Kenneth Cooper's website. While Cooper may not be a name you recognize, you probably recognize the word "aerobics", which Cooper coined. He's been an authority on exercise and medicine for almost 40 years. He puts the last several weeks of his show on the website, and in many parts of the country, you can listen to him on Saturdays on the radio.

You may not realize it, but the government has a big vested interest in keeping you healthy. With their various programs, they often wind up paying a portion of (if not all) medical bills for many in our population. As a result, they have created some very good websites. One of the best for weight loss is: www.smallstep.gov - it's a site that tells you how to lose weight by making little changes that will with consistent application lead to big improvements in your weight and health. For general health information, the National Institutes of Health's website at www.nih.gov and its subsidiary sites are great resources.

These 4 sites should keep you busy for a while. I'll be posting more soon.


Monday, December 27, 2004

My Plan of Attack

Since, as you likely know, I'm trying to qualify this coming spring to run the Boston Marathon, my exercise program is pretty structured. I'm running, and not in modest amounts. DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS AT HOME! I'm currently doing about 40 miles a week, up from 0 just 6 weeks ago (though I had a pretty good pre-injury base). So, my exercise is taken care of. It consists roughly of 5 hours of running weekly, normally spread over 7 days (no days off, though easy days are part of the plan - recovery is necessary, esp. on days like today...my legs are rebelling a bit at the 20+ miles of combined running and racewalking this weekend).

Pick a reasonable exercise that you want to do, generally it should be one of the big 4 aerobic activities: walking, running, swimming, or bicycling; but a machine based variant like elliptical trainers, stair climbers, etc. are also fine. I favor walking as a suggestion for most people. It costs nothing, is available at your door, and is low-impact. When you walk, don't stroll! walk hard enough that you're breathing heavily (or use a heart rate monitor to really optimize your benefits).

I'm trying to eat smaller amounts of healthier foods. These foods are less calorie dense and so keep me feeling full and thus, less likely to fill up on unhealthy snacks. I weighed late last week and may have been down as much as 3 lbs. (I haven't been consistent about which scale I weigh on, nor time of day, nor dress, so it's pretty iffy, but I think I'm down slightly.) It would surprise me that it would be 3 lbs., though. Perhaps 1!, losing 3 in a week is likely mostly water, so it doesn't count.

You now know how I'm going to be working at getting back to about 152 lbs. (Any Brits reading this? Would that be a bit under 11 stone? Let me know with a comment.)

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Paying the Price!

I had not gotten on a scale since August. I got on one yesterday morning (not my regular scale) and was startled to see that I'd put on 12 lbs. since then. I know that the cause was a combination of factors - lack of exercise combined with being helpful to my son...helping with his cookies and other snacks.

So, here it is, holiday time and I realize that I need to ratchet up the attention to what I'm putting in to myself. I run and because I am a competitive runner, I know there's a price to excess weight (Note the word excess - that's a word that causes problems for a lot of people with eating disorders - they don't recognize the difference.) and it's estimated at 2 seconds per pound per mile. That means that in a 5K (3.1 mile) race, I'd take about a minute and a quarter longer to get to the finish. That's a big deal in a race that normally take me 20 minutes to run.

What makes this an even bigger deal is that I'm training for a marathon. And there the time penalty works to 629 seconds or 10 1/2 minutes. That really matterrs when you're racing the clock. I should say that one of my life's dreams has been to qualify and run the Boston Marathon and for me, that means I need to run another marathon in under 3 hours and 31 minutes. They identify the cut-off as 3:30, but the fine print essentially says that if the first digits are 3:30 or less, then you're in, so up to 3:30:59 will work. I will be trying to qualify either in late April or early May, with a second attempt in the fall, if necessary.

One note regarding the marathon, in my opinion, for most people, especially those without a running background, trying to run one without at least two years of fairly serious training is likely to result in you being turned off to running, so I discourage it. You are better off running 5 milers, 10K's (6.2 miles) and stepping up occasionally to the half-marathon. The price you pay in wear and tear on your body as you train for a marathon is huge and unless it represents the culmination of a dream, it probably does not make sense.

There's been a trend towards people walking (or run/walking) marathons. This is still a pretty serious commitment (though many runners look derisively at it), and should not be undertaken lightly, but the calculus here is very different. There's a lot of difference in the effort needed to prepare for a 5+ hour marathon versus an under 4 hour marathon. This is reasonable and attainable for most people with a reasonable build-up program of 6 months or so. It can also serve as a reasonable introduction to world of marathoning, just make sure that you pick an event that is walker-friendly. (I'll talk more about that in a future posting.)

I digressed from my problem into running, but the message here is two-fold: first, that we need to be constantly vigilant in maintaining our weight and second, that lack of activity amplifies the sins that we might oterwise get away with. I am now back at my running, but I am paying the price. Meantime, I encourage any of you who see this to post your goal and your progress so we can share the weight-loss process.

Friday, December 17, 2004

Inspiring People

Two people in the running world who (whom?) I find very inspiring are Ed Whitlock & Fauja Singh. They are both world class runners, though it's likely you've never heard of them, or if you have, that you don't remember their names.

Both have set world records for the marathon in their age groups. Whitlock is now (and I haven't fact-checked this) 73 years old and he broke the world record for 70+ year olds in the marathon with a time of 2:54:48 (Yes, two-hours and 54 minutes and change!). He broke the record he'd set a year earlier at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon, cutting nearly 5 minutes off his time.

I always get a kick out of Whitlock's training regime. Ten miles a day in a graveyard! It's a great set-up for a joke. I just hope I can be in the position of having people laugh at my training regime when I get to be his age. Of course, after we get over the jokes about visiting his non-running friends, etc., we tend to look at the real value of this. He's able to train with very little traffic and NO high-speed traffic, and in peaceful environment. As a result, the risk to him of getting hit by a car is virtually nil, and at his age, that would likely be a career ending injury.

Singh is a Londoner, but also raced the Toronto Waterfront Marathon a year ago. He's now 93, but set the 90+ record by going under 6 hours. He gave in a bit this fall, and ran the half-marathon at Toronto, finishing in 2:30:02.

These guys, along with some others are truly rewriting the book on aging.

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Is Bowling Exercise?

I pick bowling because it has little physical movement and is social and often involves eating and drinking. Is it exercise? Yes, you must lift the ball (typically 10-16 lbs.) about 20 times per game. So, your throwing (rolling?) arm gets some exercise. It also involves moving through a fairly wide range of motion, including twisting your torso, so it helps keep your back limber. But, is it an exercise that will be helpful in losing weight? No.

The activity that goes on is not sustained. If you sit between frames, you stand up, walk perhaps 10 feet, pick up your ball, throw the ball, and provided you did not strike, wait for the ball to return, then throw it again, then sit down. Is it better than sitting on the couch? Yes.

Now, if you've had a couple of beers while you've been bowling, what benefit have you gotten? You've likely consumed more calories than you've burned, so on the weight loss front, it's been a negative, though a small one, and if you've eaten fatty snacks with the beer, then perhaps a bigger negative.

It's not my desire to condemn bowling. Every time I do it, I have a lot of fun, just don't consider it exercise (or at least not more than minimal exercise). It's a great recreational activity. Golf, when played from a cart is similar, but if golf is played using a pull cart or carrying your own bag, then it rates pretty highly.

When you look for an exercise for weight loss, you must find one that makes you breathe deeply while you're doing it. This usually means vigorous walking (or running if your body can take the pounding), swimming, bicycling, or one of the machines that mimics these or other continuous activities.

So, walk to the bowling alley. Then you can count going bowling as your exercise. As with dieting, if exercise is a burden, you won't do it. Have fun and you'll succeed; make it a chore and you'll fail.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

What Is Training?

During a recent discussion with a friend who's in the fitness business, we disagreed a bit on what training is. I suspect it's more a debate on when to use the term. So, here's my take on training.

Anytime you make your body do work in order to change its response, you are training. That means that if you are walking to improve your health or lose weight, you're training. In this case, training your body to be able to carry oxygen better, improve musculature, etc. A lot of people don't think of this as training, but it is. Many people think that it's training only if you're following a written (or occasionally unwritten) program for competitive purposes.

The basic rule of training can be described as "Stress and Recover"*, so if you are stressing the body (even slightly), you are training. Are you breathing hard when you are doing your exercise (activity)? Do your muscles get sore (even just some of the time)? If so, you are likely training.

Now comes the second question, why train? Unless you want to be the Pillsbury Dough Boy (or Girl), you should do some training. I recently heard an interesting statistic (though I haven't confirmed it) - there are more people in nursing homes for muscular weakness than for heart conditions. This was stated as part of a presentation on fitness for non-exercisers, and his argument was that if we don't train our bodies, we'll eventually wind up with poor quality of life because we'll eventually be unable to do the things we enjoy (and even those we don't). He proceded to make a case for doing squats by stating that almost every one of us needs to do squats daily, he went on to explain that it's often done with a newspaper or magazine in hand, and that the inability to do this was one of the things most damaging to self-esteem for those in a nursing home.

So, yes, we should train. But I didn't train as a child, why do it now? You DID train as a child, you PLAYED! And if you were like most children, you did a variety of activities, running, jumping, climbing, throwing, bicycling, etc. These activities were fun and we didn't realize that we were training. Now, time often does not permit a varied and random training progrm like we did as kids, but if we want to succeed, our training should be fun and varied. It doesn't matter what you do, but do it to the best of your ability (and with reasonable judgement) and you'll live a better quality life.

*I've taken this wording from Dr. Gabe Mirkin, though I doubt he originated it.

Monday, December 13, 2004

Passing of Arthur Lydiard

I just found out that Arthur Lydiard passed away. Lydiard is, arguably, the most influential coach of runners of the last half century. So, what does this have to do with weight loss?

As a 27-year old, Lydiard, who'd dropped out of school at age 16, went for a 5-mile run with a much older man (47). The older man just took him apart on the run. Lydiard is said to have asked himself, "If he can do this to me at 27, what kind of shape will I be in when I get to his age?" He proceeded to learn what he could about conditioning (in those days, it was mostly learning from those who did it), and within a few years had transformed himself into a national champion (New Zealand).

The lesson here is that if you desire it, you can remake yourself. Lydiard died in Texas, while on a lecture tour of the USA. At age 87, he was the epitome of the expression "Carpe Diem" (Seize the Day), although hobbled by bad knees and a stroke, he let nothing stop him from getting through his day.

We can all learn a lot about how to live life from this giant of the coaching world. He will be missed.

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Diet & Exercise vs. Diet Alone

I regularly find myself needing to go through the discussion of diet plus exercise versus diet alone. It's been talked about to death, but restating it is rarely a mistake.

If you diet, without exercising, your body tends to see the lack of calories as famine. As a result, it goes into "starvation mode," becoming super efficient at conserving calories. This means that if you normally burn 2000 calories/day, but you cut your caloric intake to 1500 calories/day, your body goes to work to get along with 1500/day.

If you exercise, and slightly cut calories, the body thinks you are needing to work harder to gather food. Thus, can not cut its metabolic rate because that would make it hard for you to gather food. (The fact that the exercise happens over the roads or in a gym is not understood by the body.) So, your metabolic rate remains at a normal level, and you keep burning the higher number of calories, and actually increase the number you burn by doing the exercise.

This is why the combination of diet and exercise leads to weight loss success and diet alone leads to failure.

One final note, the exercise you do should be vigorous enough to make you breathe heavily, but not so hard that you are gasping for breath. (And this is a mistake that many exercisers, especially beginning exercisers make.) If you walk, walk!, don't stroll. If you have company, walk as fast as the slower person can while being comfortable, and if there's a big pace differerence between the two of you, find a way, like circling back, to keep both of you working appropriately.

Thursday, December 09, 2004

Ode to Dr. Kenneth Cooper

I remember finding a copy of Dr. Kenneth Cooper's groundbreaking book Aerobics in a used bookstore. I knew that Cooper was instrumental in getting the running boom of the 1970's started. The claim is made that Cooper coined the term "aerobics," and I have no reason to doubt that. In his radio show, he's often described as "the father of aerobics," and while I have some issue with that (believing that people like Arthur Lydiard, provided a lot of the foundation on which Cooper based his theories), but the issue is one of nuance, not real substance. (I have not reviewed this seminal book in several years, so this is coming from memory, but I believe Cooper is NOT trying to misrepresent, and I think he spread credit widely in that book, rather it's a question of whether naming something that was going on makes you the father or not.)

My favorite picture of Cooper is a shot of him with two other giants of that first running boom - Dr. George Sheehan and Jim Fixx. Both of those men have passed away. Fixx from a massive heart attack while he was still a very public figure, and Sheehan of prostate cancer about a decade ago. I think that picture tells an important story - FITNESS DOES NOT MAKE US BULLETPROOF!

Cooper is very active through his Cooper Clinic and affiliated organizations, the Cooper Wellness Center, etc. He has really developed a lot of great resources in the Dallas area, and spreads his message through a radio show. You can get at recent shows through his website at www.cooperaerobics.com, they're worth a listen.

What's the message here, first, I'm always pleased to recognize people who do extraordinary things, and clearly Cooper falls into that category.
Second, Cooper says that Fixx could have improved his odds of survival (and it seems clear that running did prolong his life, he had a family history of congenital heart problems, having lost both his father and a brother at much younger ages) by having undergone testing. Today, something like Fixx's problem could likely be surgically repaired in a fairly straightforward procedure, I think the risks that existed a quarter century ago were much greater, but if the problem was known, even if surgical intervention was decided against, things could have been done to limit his risk.

In sum, I wanted to recognize Cooper for his "preaching the gospel of health," thank him for his efforts in trying to improve America's (and the World's) health and tell you about him, so you'll know he's someone to trust.

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Am I Fat?

If you are asking the question, there's a pretty good chance that you are. The standard today for determining this is Body Mass Index or BMI. BMI is more or less an electronic version of the old height and weight charts that most of us remember from the doctor's office. On BMI calculator I've found to be easy and convenient can be found at: http://nhlbisupport.com/bmi/bmicalc.htm. This is part of the website for the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. It also has interpretive data - if your BMI is less than 18.5, you're underweight; 18.5-24.9 makes you "normal" weight (I have an issue with the term - it's a healthy weight, but in the United States today, it's unfortunately NOT NORMAL.); between 25.0 and 29.9, you're classed as overweight; and 30.0 or higher makes you obese.

OK, so I'm overweight (or obese), now what do I do? Well, the best thing to do is to see your doctor to establish a safety and healthy plan for losing the weight. Most likely, your doctor will recommend a combination of increased activity and reducing your calorie intake. It will probably be a week or two until you can get in to see the doctor, but you want to start today, so what should you do? I'd suggest that you start paying attention to trying to increase your activity level. This can be as simple as parking further from your office (or home), or choosing to walk to the lunch place, or taking the stairs instead of the elevator. (Note: for security reasons some office buildings, hotels and apartments lock their stairwell's exit doors except on exit floors. Check this first, unless you're willing to backtrack - not much of a problem if it's one or two flights, but perhaps a big problem if it's 10 floors.) Also, pay attention to what you are eating and drinking. Did you know that a 12 oz. can of soda has about 170 calories? (I checked a can of Mountain Dew, others may differ, but probably not a lot.) So, if you drink 3 or 4 cans of soda a day, just by substituting water or another non-caloric beverage, you can cut out 500 or more calories a day.

Meanwhile, if you're overweight or obese, you should also know that you are not alone. Roughly one-third of adult Americans are obese, another third are overweight, and a third are normal weight (the number who are underweight is very small, but if you're there because of a health problem, it can be very serious). You may want to find a friend who's also trying to lose weight, if you do this, you can share your learning.

Choosing to be healthier is a process of learning both about what you can (and should) do and what you are willing to tolerate. If you start making some of these little changes, you can start making a difference today.


Tuesday, December 07, 2004

We Are From The Government. We Are Here To Help You.

In this case, it's really true! The U.S. government has a BIG vested interest in keeping us healthy. Why? Well, the cost of healthcare is skyrocketing, and as more baby-boomers come to rely on Social Security and Medicare, more of those costs will be borne by the government. As Americans have become more overweight, many very costly diseases or conditions have started to occur with greater frequency. Some of these include: diabetes (type II), coronary disease, several types of cancer, and stroke.

So, what can I do about this? Use the resources they have developed. I have already mentioned the Small Step weight loss site at: www.smallstep.gov
The National Diabetes Education Program site can be found at: www.ndep.nih.gov
And lots of other good information can be gotten at through the National Institutes of Health website at: www.nih.gov

I'll go into some more information on some cool tools on these sites in the near future.

Sunday, December 05, 2004

Little Steps Add Up

A Chinese proverb says, "The march of a thousand miles begins with a single step." The same may be said about taking care of your health. As with that march, there are many things we can do, but often only a few we can do right now.

When we are eating, stop a little sooner or make one (or more) better choices than you would have in the past. When you are driving your car, slow down a little. If you're running late, that extra 5 or 10 mph won't get you where you're going meaningfully faster, but may increase the likelihood of an accident. If you're exercising, try to go 3 or 5 or 10 minutes longer. These little things make a world of difference over the long-term.

Many years ago, I was at a YMCA, and heard an instructor respond to a question as follows: "How long will it take me to lose the weight?" and the reply was, "How long did it take you to put it on?" The message was that short-term fixes usually don't work, but long-term can, and often does work. You must learn different eating patterns. It's easy and painless, but you must learn and live with the things you've learned.

If you do this, you can succeed at getting your health under control.

Friday, December 03, 2004

Is Weight Loss In Your New Year's Plans?

For an awful lot of people, one of their key New Year's resolutions is to lose weight and get in shape. It's a great resolution, but you have to have a plan to make it succeed. All too often I've seen the January 15th syndrome. What is that? It's when someone is really motivated to succeed this year, so they go to the gym every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and they work out hard. They even go on a diet. It's great...

...until after two weeks or so, they are fed up with waking up tired on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and of being hungry most of the time. So, on or about January 15th, they say, "Losing weight and exercise will have to wait until next year." Thus, the January 15th syndrome.

Have you been a sufferer? Are you about to be one? I can help you. I've explained why exercise alone will not succeed at getting your weight down. (if you want to see that explanation, click here: http://scootersweightloss.blogspot.com/2004/11/portion-control-helps-you-lose-weight.html) But how do I exercise to lose weight without getting tired? My experience is that most exercise induced fatigue is caused by exercising too intensively. If you exercise with less intensity, the fatigue does not occur and you can exercise longer (thus burning more calories) and actually achieve greater weight loss by not getting fatigued.

One of the best tools for judging exercise intensity is a heart rate monitor, but a monitor is NOT required (though convenient) in order to do this. The key message today is that by intelligently exercising and modifying your eating, you can succeed at weight loss.

If this sounds like a good path to follow, bookmark this blog and let me help you travel the path to a healthier life.

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Exercising Longer is More Beneficial Than Exercising Harder

Wait right there! Did he really say that? Is there more benefit to longer exercise than harder exercise? Well, like with most things, yes and no. First, the facts: 1) exercising harder will burn more calories per minute than exercising easier 2) You will fatigue faster by exercising harder 3) In terms of total calories burned, duration trumps intensity.

I've done some experimentation and found that when walking, I could vary my calorie burn by about 20% by going hard. If time is tight, picking a short, intense workout may be the best you can do; but keep my intensity lower will let me be comfortable exercising for 50% (or even 100%) longer.

If we look at the math, let's assume I walk at a 12 minute/mile pace (5 mph) and that's pretty fast. If I do a 30-minute workout and burn 120 calories/mile, I've burned 300 calories. If I pick up my pace to an 11 minute/mile (5.4 mph) pace and my calorie burn rate goes to 145 calories/mile but I only exercise for 20 minutes, then I burn only about 265 calories.

Do other factors enter the equtaion, like increased metabolic rate? Yes, and so does fatigue. You are more likely to feel fatigued after the short, intense exercise than after the longer, easier exercise. For me, that means I'm more likely to skip exercising tomorrow if I do intense exercise, so for me (and I suspect most others), slightly reducing the intensity is likely to mean a more successful exercise program.

Note that people training for competition will often live with that "tired all the time" feeling in order to compete better, but many find it to be a burden.

Also, long duration exercise (by this I mean 90 minutes or more), when repeated regularly (once or twice per week for about 3 months) will have a big impact in your body's ability to process oxygen (this means you can exercise harder with less fatigue) and is likely to lower your blood pressure.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

100 Right Choices a Day

I often describe the process of dieting as making a hundred right choices a day. It's a process of choosing little changes from what you do each day, each time selecting a better choice than the one that you normally make. That means choosing to put plain, non-fat yogurt on your baked potato instead of sour cream (200-300 cal.). It means choosing to use a half-pat of butter instead of a full one (50 cal.). It means having an apple as a snack instead of chips (300 cal.) As you can see, making better choices, even just part of the time can make a big difference.

If you make these kinds of choices, you can enjoy eating, not feel hungry, and lose weight. Keep at it and keep your spirits up.