Embrace the Opportunity

I got word the other day that my brother-in-law, my younger sister's husband, was rushed to the hospital with what he thought was a heart attack.  When my older sister called, she told me that he was watching football and felt pressure in his chest and numbness in his left arm.  They called emergency services, and he was whisked away to the hospital.

He's 39 years of age.

I'm not writing this to slam my brother in law.  Sure I'd like to see him give up the cigarettes, alcohol, and junk food, but I'm not putting him down.  After all, I'm not always the model of healthy living myself.

I'm writing this because it's important to remember - you don't always know.

You don't know when the last cigarette you smoked will be the last one you ever smoke.  You don't know when the last drink you had will indeed be your last drink ever.  You don't know if the last meal you ate will be the last meal of your life.

You just don't know.

You are in the perfect position now to do what needs to be done to take control of your life.  Nothing has to change.  Nothing has to happen beforehand.  You don't have to wait until Monday.  The time is now.

You must embrace the opportunity to become healthy before it's too late.  While I hope it never happens to anyone reading this message, someone is going to have a stroke today.  Someone is going to have a heart attack today.  Someone is going to go into a diabetic coma and never recover.

Don't let it be you.

Don't wait until something dire happens before you take control.  Why must it be a heart attack or a stroke, or the loss of a loved one to some weight-related condition that jerks you awake and compels you to act?  Embrace the opportunity to be healthy.  Embrace the opportunity to show self love and respect.

Embrace the opportunity.  Then act on it.

You can do it.

Go!

Breaking out of the Summer Doldrums

Summers here in Eastern North Carolina have a tendency to do one of two things.  They either direct people toward the Outer Banks and the beach or they force people to just stay inside.  As if the often-oppressive heat weren't enough, we get humidity that makes the air so thick being in it feels like putting on a heavy winter coat.  Exercising outside is unheard of.

Unless you've bought a good at-home training program (P90X and Insanity, for example), it's quite easy to forego your exercise routine.  Then starts a downward spiral - once we're no longer exercising, we stop eating well.  The rest of the story is a journey into weight gain.

I'm personally looking forward to fall.  Even though I love the at-home programs, there's nothing quite like getting out of the house and into the crisp fall air that just invigorates the body.  It's my favorite time to go for a run down by the river or along the tree-lined streets.  I especially love the trails down at the park around the lake. There is a running trail with a pull-up bar and beam for doing incline push-ups and dips between laps.

I've personally found myself slacking a bit since going back to school and having most of my free time dominated by work, karate, and kids' activities.  Thankfully I can still get a good workout in karate, but I need to do more still.  Since the kids have just started soccer, once the temperatures go down just a bit more, I'll be donning my running gear and using those trails I mentioned earlier.

If your summer has found you taking it easy, make plans now to get back into a regular routine of training and nutrition.  Sit down and make a plan that you can work with and will lead you back into a body that will declare your fitness to the world when next summer rolls in.  If you're fairly new to fitness training, you can read my article on Getting Started with Physique Transformation to get yourself on the right road.

It's been a great summer.  Embrace the autumn reprieve from the heat and get outside for a daily walk.  Once the winter rolls around we'll probably huddle up inside again, so now is the perfect time to get yourself into a new routine.  We're behind you all the way.  Go for it!

Be well!

Different Goals require Different Approaches

I was recently asked how much cardio is recommended on a daily basis.  The first thought that came to me was, "What is your goal?"

You see, your approach to training is determined by the goals you have.  Simply put, there are 3 basic goals that people have as far as their physiques are concerned: reduction, maintenance, and gain.

Reduction

About 67% of the US population is overweight or obese, putting the majority of people into the "reduction" category.  Their specific goal is to drop unwanted, unhealthy fat.  So what must these people do to achieve that goal? 

First, their diet has to be consistent with the goal.  5-6 frequent meals (every 2-3 hours) that are balanced in protein, carbohydrate, and fat content are a must.  Meals should not exceed 300-350 calories each, providing a daily caloric intake of 1800-2100 cal/day.  If hunger is an issue, a healthy intake of vegetables with 2-3 meals will help boost the volume of meals without adding a bunch of calories.

Second, a specific approach to exercise is required to reduce fat.  Spending 1 hour plodding along on a treadmill just isn't going to cut it.  HIIT training, cross-training, and weight training are all necessary ingredients in an effective training regimen.

Contrary to what popular news stories are saying, you aren't going to burn sufficient calories for reduction purposes by parking further away from the door at the mall and taking the stairs rather than the elevator.  Fat reduction is a matter of intentional action - making sure that the caloric burn exceeds the caloric intake.  I know from experience that becoming fat requires very little effort.  Undoing the fat requires intentional effort - including an amount of discomfort.

Maintenance

There are those who have dropped the fat and just want to maintain their current levels of fitness.  These people have it a bit easier as far as diet and exercise are concerned.  Diligence, however, is still necessary to avoid allowing fat to creep its way back onto the hips and belly.

The maintenance diet is similar to the reduction diet in that frequent meals are spread throughout the day and are nutrient rich.  Because there's no desire to create a caloric deficit (where caloric burn is higher than caloric intake), meals can be somewhat larger - 400 calories or so.  2200-2400 calories per day will likely help the average person maintain their current weight and fitness levels.

Training can be moderate to intense with a balance of weight training and moderate cardio (30 minutes).  An active lifestyle is still recommended, as anyone who adopts an inert lifestyle will probably regain fat weight.

Gain

Believe it or not, there are people out there whose goal is to gain weight.  I'm reminded of the Charles Atlas ads I used to see at the end of the comics I read as a kid where the muscle-bound bully kicks sand in the face of some scrawny guy on the beach.  The skinny kid gets Atlas's program, bulks up and returns the favor to the bully.

Gainers have to take specific approaches to packing on pounds.  Their daily caloric intake is about 4000-5000 calories of CLEAN foods.  The diet is necessarily clean to avoid excessive fat deposits.  Figure that Gainers are eating like Reducers but in larger volumes.

Gym time is reduced to weight training almost exclusively, since the catabolic nature of cardio is counterproductive to the Gainer's goals.

For specific nutritional and exercise regimens related to your individual goals as a Reducer, Maintainer, or Gainer, talk to a fitness professional at your gym.

Be well!

Formula for Health

Achieving optimal health is a matter of a pretty simple formula:

Consistency + Exercise + Nutrition + Recovery = Results

Truth is relative, and this formula is not immune to the perceptions and opinions of others, but for the most part, we can boil success in our health down to those 4 ingredients.

Our marketplace constantly bombards us with ways to “succeed” in opposition to the formula.  Gimmicky diets (NutriSystem, Adkins, and Weight Watchers for example) leave out the exercise component by focusing entirely on the nutrition aspect.  On the other hand, magic pills (Solo Slim and Alli for example) downplay the role of proper nutrition. 

All “diet” programs can deliver results, but the quality of those results is what interests me the most.  NutriSystem, Adkins, and Solo Slim will help you drop pounds, but the end result is an undernourished body, not a healthy one.  Since my primary aim with this website is to help people develop healthy, vibrant, and active lives, I’ll stick to talking about getting meaningful and enduring results.

Consistency + Exercise + Nutrition + Recovery = Results

What is consistency if not the practice of doing something frequently enough that it becomes habit or second nature.  You must perform all other parts of the formula (Exercise, Nutrition, and Recovery) on a regular and recurring basis.  In my opinion, that means for 6 days a week your diet is clean, your exercise routine set, and your schedule arranged to include 7-9 hours of sleep. 

Consistency becomes easier when there is a specific plan in place.  Enter the adage, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”  Exercising 3 days a week and eating the occasional healthy meal won’t yield the best results because there’s too much “off” time between healthy behaviors.  Health isn’t a matter of hitting the mark occasionally.  Consistency with frequency is key.

Your plan is better when it’s written down and visible.  The very act of writing it down makes the plan more concrete – more real – in our minds.  The end result of a written plan is a higher likelihood of following through with the plan.

My plan for consistency is pretty simple: eat a decent breakfast, have a snack at 10:15, eat lunch at 12:00 or so, have another snack around 3:00, exercise at 4:30, have a post workout recovery shake, eat dinner at 6:30, and eat again at about 9:00.  I might miss one of those meals along the way depending on how work goes, but I generally eat 5-6 times a day without fail.  The workout is scheduled for the same time every day except Saturday, when we work out before noon.  Sunday is our day off.  No workouts and some “cheating” on our diet.

While I would like to say that I’ve got this whole thing worked out myself, I would be lying if I did.  While I can easily maintain my training schedule and eating routine, I still tend to shortcut myself in the sleep department.  I tend to lean closer to the 7-hour side of sleep rather than the 8-9 hour side.  I usually head to bed between 11:30 and 12:00 while getting up at 6:50-7:00.  That’s my night-owl aspect coming into play.

Consistency + Exercise + Nutrition + Recovery = Results

There’s a lot that can be said about exercise (and I’ve said a lot of it here), but I’ll condense it for simplicity.  Exercise must be a physically demanding activity that has the effect of burning calories.  That’s not to say that exercise can’t be fun – playing tennis, walking 18 holes of golf, surfing, and chasing the kids around the yard are all great forms of exercise.  I’m merely stating that exercise must push your body beyond the limits it usually experiences on a day-to-day basis.

Whatever activity you choose should involve at least 30 minutes of physical exertion.  Please note the last word in that sentence – exertion.  Walking around the parking lot at work for 30 minutes during lunch is better than sitting on your butt for the same amount of time, but don’t expect to burn loads of calories doing it.  Walking briskly while keeping your core tight and vigorously moving your arms in concert with your feet for 30 minutes will tax more of the body and burn more calories.  You don’t have to gasp and sweat bullets, but pushing beyond just “walking” should be the norm.

Suffice it to say that if your heart isn’t pumping a bit harder and your breathing isn’t noticeably faster during your “exercise,” chances are you’re shortcutting your efforts.  Dropping fat will take much longer if it ever occurs at all.

Consistency + Exercise + Nutrition + Recovery = Results

It is indeed true that you are what you eat.  If you eat a bunch of junk day after day, your body will reflect that fact by packing on a lot of extra junk in the form fat.   While it’s not absolutely mandatory that every meal you eat from now until your dying day is perfectly clean, the majority of your foods should be of the healthier variety – fruits, vegetables, lean meats, and unprocessed carbohydrates. 

Alice and I have a lot of variety in our diet that keeps eating well from being completely hum-drum.  Our meats usually include turkey breast, chicken breast, venison, fresh fish, shrimp, and lean beef cuts.  On occasion, we might come across bison or emu in the grocery store.  Those are pretty nice if you can get them.  Our unprocessed carbs are fairly standard for us (though not necessarily for everyone) – couscous, quinoa, whole grain rice, corn, potatoes, oatmeal, and cream of wheat.  Fruits count as carbs, and we include them in smoothies and protein shakes in addition to eating them straight out of the package.

If you’re one of those that eats on the run, meal replacement powders and bars are a fair substitute for solid foods (but only occasionally).  If you must stop at the local fast food joint, choose fresh options like the salads (with light dressing) or un-fried (grilled, baked, etc) options.  A great place to stop for a quick bite is Subway.  I personally prefer the turkey breast and ham with Dijon mustard and a bunch of fresh veggies stacked on it.  I choose the wheat bread over the white options and avoid bologna, cheese, and heavy sauces that can pack calories onto a sandwich in a hurry.

Eating well doesn’t have to be difficult, but it does require a little forethought.  If you’re not thinking about the needs of your body as far as fuel is concerned, then you should question your commitment to your health.

Consistency + Exercise + Nutrition + Recovery = Results

You can’t continue to work a body without resting it.  Recovery includes eating the kinds of foods that will help your body recover from working out, getting adequate rest, and giving your body at least one day off per week with limited physical exertion.

7-9 hours of sleep are recommended for optimal attention and brain function.  While it is certainly possible to sleep less and still enjoy success in your exercise and nutrition programs, the majority of information out there still points to the average 8-hour night for overall health.

The recovery day helps prevent burnout.  If you knew that you had to work out and eat clean every day for the next 40 years, chances are you’d never start a healthy regimen.  Around our house, we take Sundays off.  We relax our diet and don’t engage in any strenuous workouts.  We might go for a walk if the weather is nice, but we’re not scheduling a 45 minute butt-kicking with Insanity for that day.  It’s my favorite day to just sit around, watch some TV, and relax.  While I’m doing that, my body is busily repairing all the damage I’ve done over the week with 6 intense daily workouts and 6-8 hours of karate.

Sundays are also the days that we’re most likely to order a pizza or get some fried chicken for dinner.  With a little latitude in our diet on Sundays, we’re less likely to feel deprived of some of our favorite eats.  As a matter of fact, I’m looking forward to my Klondike bar, which is sitting in the freezer as I write this.

In Summary

Better health isn’t a mystery; it’s a simple matter of following a basic formula.  Leaving out any of the individual components will result in a substandard product – much in the same way leaving eggs out of a recipe will result in a substandard cake.  Adding anything else to the formula just unnecessarily complicates it. 

Consistently exercising properly, eating well, and allowing your body to recover will eventually yield the desired results – a healthier and happier you!

Be well!