OK, time to start over. 19/06/2010
Posted by Scott Mathews in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Since early February, I’ve been on an intensive, self-designed program to lose fifty pounds and regain the fitness I enjoyed twenty years ago when I was a bicycle racer. I’ve done pretty well–down 35 pounds so far. My vital signs are great, too: blood pressure 120/70, resting pulse 48, LDL cholesterol 39, A1C (glucose) 5.1. But for the past six weeks, I’ve been totally stuck at 184 pounds, when I want to be 165.
You can argue that, given my vitals, any further weight loss is purely for cosmetic reasons and not for health. You would be correct. But at age 54, I’m just not prepared to resign myself to having a saggy old man’s chest and belly like I still do. (The word “moobs” comes to mind–eww.)
So, I’m going to pretend that none of the past four months ever happened and design a completely new fitness program for myself. Fortunately, I just returned from the annual West Virginia Physical Activity Symposium, where a presentation by Dr. Wayne Westcott, a strength training expert, made me a true believer in the absolute importance of resistance training. There are so many benefits beyond merely gaining stronger muscles. For example, you burn more calories at rest, and this effect continues for several days after your workout. How cool is that?
Nearly all of the benefits attributed to aerobic training can be gained through resistance training. Studies comparing aerobic and strength training side by side have shown little difference between the two. And I find strength training in my home gym to be more enjoyable than slogging down the bike trail for an hour in the heat while dodging muggers.
No more food log. No more daily weigh-ins. No more checking myself in the mirror every time I pass. I’ll still get on the bike a couple of times a week if I feel like it, but I’m going to try following the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) strength training guidelines for a couple of months and see if my pants start to feel any looser!
When is not training, training? 09/06/2010
Posted by Scott Mathews in Wellness, Workouts.add a comment
Today, I’m forcing myself to take a complete day off from training. No running, no biking, no weight training. My body is telling me that I need it–you should see how klutzy and irritable I’ve been the last couple of days. And I know from my background in bicycle racing and exercise physiology that it’s easy to train so hard and so often that you exceed your body’s ability to recover and to repair itself from one day to the next. But I still hate wasting a precious evening just sitting around, with my weight bench and my pull-up bar staring me in the face as I try to watch TV.
There are different theories about what causes overtraining and what the symptoms are. Generally, it’s thought that muscle fibers get torn and stretched during a hard workout and they need time to recover. There are other processes in the body that get run down by training and also need to recover. Mentally, overtraining often results in fatigue, irritability, depression, and loss of motivation.
So, I’m taking the day off. Hard to remember that I’m actually enhancing my physical development by sitting around, but I’ll give it a try. For one day only.
How to lose weight without really trying! 25/04/2010
Posted by Scott Mathews in Weight Control, Wellness.add a comment
There’s a neat new research-based way to lose weight, and it’s called—NEAT! That stands for “Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.” Don’t let the name scare you off. All it amounts to is increasing the calories that you burn in your normal daily activities, as opposed to calories that you burn through formal exercise.
Until recently, most weight-loss research has focused on calories burned during exercise. But scientists at the world-famous Mayo Clinic in Minnesota became interested in learning how many calories we burn in normal daily life. Through a series of research studies, they found that people who were not overweight burned significantly more calories just going through their days than obese people did. They also found that the calories we burn in daily activities are far more important to losing and maintaining weight than the calories we burn in exercise.
What does this mean? For one thing, the Mayo Clinic group estimates that the automation that has taken over our workplaces may have reduced our daily calorie burn by 100-200 calories per day. All other things being equal, that difference could make you gain a pound about every 17 days, and could account for much of the reason that Americans are overweight. Another researcher estimates that using an automatic dishwasher rather than handwashing could make you gain over 30 pounds per year!
Wow. So how can we kick up our NEAT? Luckly, it’s simple, and it doesn’t require tedious exercise like walking on a treadmill. Here are some examples:
- Standing rather than sitting for one hour a day (doesn’t have to be continuous) can burn 100 calories. Can you stand more at work? Take phone calls standing up, encourage everyone to stand up at meetings? (That also makes meetings shorter!)
- When you go to the mall or to Wal-Mart, can you walk one lap all the way around and then start shopping? Malls are excellent for exercise if you stay away from the Great American Cookie store.
- When carrying groceries in, can you tell your teenager not to get off the computer and instead bring the bags in one bag at a time by yourself? Just be sure you get your teen up off the couch later on to make up for it.
- Can you put the TV remote away and get up and walk over to change the channel instead? Believe me, I grew up doing it this way and it’s possible!
- Do you fidget? Does someone dear to you complain about it? Tell him or her that you’re engaging in Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis and invite them to join you!
These sound like small steps, but they do add up and they’re painless to carry out. And the research is very clear that you will benefit from finding ways to move around more during your day.
In the words of Dr. James A. Levine at the Mayo Clinic, “Get up!” Which may be the simplest weight-loss plan of all time.
You have to be young to be an elite athlete. Right? 05/04/2010
Posted by Scott Mathews in Olympic Games, Workouts.Tags: boomer athletes, Masters athletes, oldest Olympic athlete, Olympic athletes, Senior Games
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Wrong. That statement isn’t true today, and it never has been.
Sure, we’re used to seeing a bunch of barely fourteen-year-old female Chinese gymnasts competing at the Olympic Games, and the top women figure skaters are hardly any older. But did you know that the oldest athlete to win an Olympic gold medal was 64? And that he went on to win a silver medal at age 72?
Oscar Swahn of Sweden competed at three Olympic Games and medaled at all of them in his sport of shooting. a sport in which the speed and endurance of youth confer less advantage. He remains the oldest person to medal at any Olympic Games.
The competition at the Masters level in sports such as running, cycling, and swimming is scarcely less intense than among the younger athletes. Masters athletes today are achieving times that would have won Olympic medals in previous decades.
If you’re a Cranky Boomer and you think your athletic glory days are behind you…think again!
My grandmother ate lard. Why was she a size two? 01/04/2010
Posted by Scott Mathews in Weight Control, Wellness.Tags: butter, lard, portion size, processed foods, sugar
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If you look at old-timey recipe books from the 1920s and 1930s, many of the recipes use ingredients we wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole today, like lard, butter, and sugar. But we know that obesity was far less prevalent back then than it is today.
I don’t completely buy the explanation that people were just more active back then. My grandmother drove around in a car, she was a full-time homemaker, and she even had a maid in her later years. (It was the maid who was obese!)
We’ve heard of the “French Paradox.” This could be the “lard paradox.” Who knows a plausible explanation for this?
I posed this question on a health and fitness forum. Here are a couple of replies:
She probably ate exactly at maintenance for her small body, naturally. I think people in those days snacked less, and at dinner, there was a certain amount made for the family, and not 2nd and 3rd and 4th helpings.
Considering the small portions that my mother, her daughter, fed us, I can believe this one.
Previous generations also seemed to know the difference between their mouth and a vacuum cleaner…as noted earlier, the size of dinner plates has increased dramatically in just a handful of years.
True, and humorous.
Years ago people ate what they could, when they could, and there wasn’t excess food sitting around because it just wouldn’t keep, bread went bad, meat went bad, etc. Now we have the ability to stockpile food due to freezers and preservatives and viola, we can stockpile it to where we can eat any time we feel like it, not just for mealtime, but if we’re bored, stressed, etc.
So what I’m coming away with is that we eat too many processed foods, we overstock our kitchens, and our portion sizes are too big. Obviously it’s possible to eat lard, butter, and sugar in small portions and maintain a healthy weight.
Think I’ll go have a piece of whole-wheat toast with a pat of real butter on it now!
The Two-Minute Workout 31/03/2010
Posted by Scott Mathews in Workouts.Tags: easy workouts, resistance training, weight training
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No, this isn’t one of those As-Seen-On-TV magical machines where merely breathing hard is guaranteed to give you washboard abs. I’m talking about how to fit resistance training into a busy work and family schedule.
If you’re like me, there may be various reasons why you won’t or can’t join a gym and spend an hour a day there. In my case, it’s those pesky three part-time jobs that I have to hold to pay the rent. But as part of my wellness improvement program, resistance training is both mandatory and enjoyable–it reminds me of my gym rat days ten years ago. So what to do?
I’m not saying this will work for everybody, but if your workouts consist mainly of using your own bodyweight for resistance, you may well be able to sneak a series of mini-workouts into your day, all day long. For example, sitting here in my office after lunch, I’m about to drop to the floor and do 30 crunches. While I was waiting outside someone else’s office this morning, I did nearly fifty wall push-ups, then I did twenty mini-crunches. (For a description of these exercises, see the post below.)
Even if you do work out with weights, these additional bodyweight exercises will still enhance your development.
So what if people see you? Either they’ll admire you, or they’ll be jealous of your fitness and your dedication. Either way, it’s worth it!
Do We Focus on Weight Loss at the Expense of Health? 26/03/2010
Posted by Scott Mathews in Wellness.2 comments
Those of us in the health and wellness field constantly tell our patients to “lose weight.” We establish target weights. We counsel diet and exercise programs. Sometimes we use scare tactics. Why do we do these things? Because we believe that weight loss will improve our patients’ health.
But why do we focus so heavily on weight, instead of focusing on the health benefits that we want to accomplish? Wouldn’t it be better to say, “Joe, we need to get your blood pressure down below 130/90. Here are some things we can try. Do them and come back in six months.” Usually, we just tell Joe to lose 30 pounds instead, hoping that losing X pounds will do the trick. Joe goes home, obsesses over weight loss, and probably plateaus at 15 pounds.
Too often, we use weight (and its cousin, body mass index) as rough proxies for actual health outcomes. True, it’s easier to explain weight to a patient than cholesterol profiles, and it’s easier (and cheaper) to simply weigh a patient than to perform lab tests. But we do patients a disservice if we lead them to believe that only by losing X pounds can they save their lives. Let’s focus on the direct health outcomes, and relegate weight measurement to its true position as only one indirect measure of wellness.
There are healthy fat people, and sick skinny people!
I want to lift weights. I’m a beginner. Do I have to join a gym? 24/03/2010
Posted by Scott Mathews in Workouts.add a comment
That’s the stereotype, isn’t it? You want to lose weight. You figure you have to pump some iron, so you shell out the money for a gym membership and maybe even a personal trainer. But is that the best approach to resistance training for beginners?
Maybe not. First, most authorities agree that restricting your calorie intake is more important in weight loss than exercise alone (see post below.) Second, if you join a gym, the chances are good that you’re going to become “overmotivated” by all the superheroes around you and end up hurting yourself by working out too hard without building up to it.
There’s another way: spend some time working out at home first! You don’t own a set of weights? No problem. There are a number of exercises you can do using only your excessive body weight for resistance that will start your process of building your muscles. Here are a few suggestions. Start out with only a few repetitions (5-8) and build up as you get stronger. And stop immediately if you feel pain.
- Squats: sit on the edge of a sturdy chair. Stand up slowly while inhaling. Sit down slowly while exhaling. Repeat.
- Knee extensions: Sitting on the chair, lift your left leg all the way up slowly, hold briefly, then let it back down slowly. Repeat with the right leg.
- Leg lifts: lie down on the floor on your back. Bring one leg part-way toward your butt and rest it on the floor. Lift the other leg slowly up all the way and back down. Repeat, then reverse legs.
- Butt lifts: bring both legs partway up and rest them on the floor. Carefully arch your middle to lift your butt slowly up in the air, then lower it. Repeat.
- Crunches: with your legs still resting partway toward your butt, put your hands behind your head (do not lock your fingers) and slowly lift your head and shoulders off the floor. Lower and repeat.
- Pushups: three ways to do this. Either do traditional pushups, or leave your knees resting on the floor (“girl pushups” in junior high.) Or, stand up a few inches away from a wall. Raise your hands to shoulder level and rest them on the wall. Move toward and away from the wall.
If you want to buy some weights for home, start with light ones, maybe in the 2-3-5 pound range. You can even create weights using plastic milk cartons filled with water. Put them on the bathroom scale to adjust the weight to your liking.
We are going to pump…you up!
Do I have to exercise until I drop to lose weight? 19/03/2010
Posted by Scott Mathews in Weight Control.Tags: exercise, Weight Control, weight loss
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No.
The health club industry would like you to think that the only way to lose weight is to join an expensive club and take extra-cost classes, ideally with a personal trainer. Surrounded by beautiful people, you will huff and puff in your baggy sweats on unpleasant machines, then go home and spend the rest of the day eating lettuce and raw carrots while you ponder your caloric sins.
But think about this: if you want to cut 100 calories out of your daily life, you can either run a mile, or you can not eat one cookie. 200 calories, you would have to run two miles, OR not drink a 20-ounce regular Coke.
See where this is headed?
For real people, weight loss is best accomplished by reasonably restricting what you eat. Exercise can help contribute to your calorie deficit, and it is very important in maintaining weight loss, but only rarely will you accomplish your diet goals by hammering yourself in a gym. And don’t think if you eat that donut, you can just work it off later.
For more examples of how much you would have to exercise to equal the calories of just not eating something, check out the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s “Portion Distortion” presentation.
Why Is It So Hard to Lose Weight? 18/03/2010
Posted by Scott Mathews in Weight Control.Tags: Weight Control, weight loss
2 comments
Because we make it too complicated.
I myself have lost 25 pounds in the last two months by following this “Magical Weight Loss Plan” that I give my obese patients, who are usually shocked to see how simple it is. I share it with you today:
- Eat less.
- Move more.
- Repeat.
Step #3 is perhaps the key element. All of us have started to “diet” for a week or two, then have given up, usually because we were starving. This is because our weight loss goals are too ambitious. Many recent medical studies have found that patients should start out with a goal of losing just ten percent of their initial weight, then stop and re-evaluate. That ten percent loss will usually result in lower blood pressure, improved cholesterol, reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes and arthritis, and other benefits.
From a medical perspective, these improvements are the reason to lose weight. Anything beyond that is often solely for cosmetic reasons. Go for it if you want to, but if ten percent is all you can handle, rest assured you are doing yourself a world of good. And by the way, plan on taking six months to lose that ten percent. Any faster and you’ll just gain it back.
More on this topic from Weight Watchers:
