Category: Exercise

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Why eat right?

I can’t help but get just a bit upset when I see posts and articles about the latest diet craze or this week’s go-to superfood. There are no silver bullets.

The authors of such articles are right about one thing, though. They all imply that you are what you eat, and that’s right. Your body composition is 75% to 80% determined by what you eat, not by how much you work out.

So the answer to many of our health woes is to simply eat right.

But … but … but … what is right?

That’s a tough one, and you can probably find a proponent of any diet you want to adopt as your lifestyle. Low carb, low fat, meat based, plant based, whole foods only, all processed foods. You name it, you can find people advocating it.

I can honestly say I’ve been through just about all of them, and the one that makes the most sense to me is a primarily whole food, plant-based diet.

According to T. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study, and a leading proponent of a whole-food, plant-based diet, if you add up all the deaths directly attributable to poor nutrition — 67% of cancers, 90% of heart diseases, 80% of strokes and diabetes — you end up with more than a million deaths a year, and that easily makes poor nutrition the #1 cause of death in the US.

Campbell entered into his research many years ago with an agenda to get more animal protein into the mouths of nutritionally starved third-world people. However, he discovered along the way, via others and, eventually, his own extensive study into the effects of animal protein on rodents, that animal protein is a tremendous promoter of cancer.

He was even able to turn cancer on and off by adding and removing animal protein from his experimental subjects’ diets.

From an interview with Campbell here:

What is your most important nutrition-based finding?
Studying animal protein has occupied most of my medical research career. For me, it was an evolution in thinking, and what I learned flew in the face of existing, dogmatic views about nutrition. One finding was that we can turn on and turn off cancer cells from animal protein. If you get animal protein in excess of what’s needed, you turn on cancer. If you replace it with plant protein, that doesn’t turn it on. That is a shocking concept.

My personal experience with what is now 7 months of a 99% vegan diet (I have incidental dairy every once in a while when dining out), with about 75% whole foods (I also eat breads and pastas), are that:

  • My eyes are whiter and don’t burn like they used to.
  • My skin is softer, which is especially noticeable in my hands and feet. I used to have to put moisturizer on my feet and that is no longer necessary.
  • My weight has been level.
  • I feel emotionally better about what I am eating.
  • I don’t miss animal protein in general, but I have a desire for eggs and raw fish from time to time, so I may incorporate them back into my diet on a limited basis at some point.

If you have a lot of weight to lose, choose a diet — any sensible diet — and stick with it, because you will experience many health benefits from simply losing the fat. Once you get to the point where you are fine-tuning, though, you may want to settle on a primarily whole food, plant-based diet.

Ultimately, to get as fit and healthy as possible, you should also exercise. After all, exercise can raise your HDL (good cholesterol), lower your blood pressure, boost your energy, and help you sleep better, among a host of other things. What’s not to like about that?

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I’m sick

Yes, I am sick. And not in a good way. (“Sick” is good these days, right?)

It’s such a shock for me to have a cold, because I literally cannot remember the last time I had one. It is, in fact, annoying as hell to have a cold.

It seriously cramps my style.

I have to admit, when I went to what I considered to be a less-than-savory music venue last Saturday evening, I wondered how things would shake out. I had a feeling. But, again, it had been so long since I’d had a cold that I was beginning to think I was untouchable by that nasty rhinovirus.

WRONG!

I felt okay Sunday.

Monday came around, and I felt a touch of something, but I just figured it was allergies. Anyway, I was starting Les Mills Combat, and I didn’t want to postpone it. I did the 35-minute introductory video, which was not too strenuous, because it just teaches the basic moves. I also did the Combat 30 Kick Start workout, which was pretty intense.

By Tuesday was fairly sure something was wrong, but I felt mostly okay, and I reasoned that it could still be just allergies, so I did the Combat 45 Power Kata, which I don’t think was the right DVD according to the prescribed sequence, but that’s beside the point. It wore me out. Good workout!

Wednesday, I knew I was sick, and Thursday, I made it through a business lunch before collapsing upon returning to the office. I laid on the floor for a few hours, listening to XM Fantasy Football Radio, and tried to feel better. I remained zombie-like for the rest of Thursday, went to sleep at 10, woke up at 2:30, back to sleep at 5:30, back up at 8:00 on Friday morning.

When I awoke Friday, I felt so much better. I went out for another business lunch, and stayed fairly productive all day.

So, Thursday seems to have been the worst of it. I hope so, anyway. I am recovering now, but all I can think about is, “How can I prevent this from happening again?”

I almost always have my hand cleanser with me. I didn’t haven’t it last Saturday, even though it was in the car, and I could easily have put it into my pocket. I had gotten a bit lax, apparently, so it’s time to step up the vigilance.

I remember back in the day, I used to get colds fairly often. I would treat the symptoms with the various OTC drugs. My favorite was Alka-Seltzer Cold Plus.

This time I was caught unaware and unprepared, but that didn’t make much difference, because I am not willing to take any of those OTC medications anyway. After all, I need my nose to run. I need to sneeze and cough. That’s my body getting the bad stuff out, right?

So, anyway, long story short: I’m sick.

I’m glad the NFL playoffs are on, because I’m not going anywhere.

I am eager to get back to Les Mills Combat. It mixes a lot of boxing and martial arts moves, which I find interesting and enjoyable, and — judging from the 2 workouts I did — it burns a whole lot of calories, really gets the heart pumping, and pushes the muscles to extremes. The instructors are weird, but not weird like they were in Les Mills Pump. In Pump they are fake-smiley-fitness-club-instructor weird. In Combat they are I-may-come-through-the-screen-and-kill-you weird. I much prefer the latter.

Here’s hoping you survive the cold and flu season better than I did. I read that the average adult gets a cold two or three times a year. Seriously? How do people do it? I am miserable….

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You’ve lost so much weight….

Today I was out walking the dog. I waved at one of my down-the-street-a-ways neighbors — someone I have never spoken with before, and certainly could not have picked out of a lineup as “one of my neighbors” — as she was pulling out of her driveway. She waved back.

That’s the end of that, right?

Wrong.

She stopped her car, rolled down her window, and waited for me to get even with her.

“You’ve lost so much weight,” she said.

My first thought is that she either needs me to help her with something or she’s mistaken me for someone else, but I say, “Thank you for noticing.” (I’m making that up. Maybe I said that, but I honestly have no idea what I said. Aaaaaaanyway….)

She looked at me, two older people having a conversation about how to be healthy, and asked hopefully, “Is that just from walking?”

I know, I know. I really have my work cut out for me, if I’m going to make sure people are informed about the best ways to get into shape, and this is just one of life’s little reminders about that.

“Walking,” I said, not bothering to mention the fact that I also exercise quite strenuously fairly often, “plus I just try to eat well.”

“Ah,” she nodded, knowingly.

“That’s the biggest part of losing weight,” I continued. “You have to eat right, get off the sugar.”

“Sugar, yes,” she agreed, adding, “and for me, it’s the bread.”

“That’ll do it,” I said, and she went her way as I went mine.

Aside from the disturbing concept that people I don’t even know are apparently watching me through their windows closely enough to notice that I’ve lost weight, I find it at least a little heartening that this particular neighbor understands that eating less bread might be a good idea.

I find it less heartening that she hoped that walking was the answer.

We all know that’s not true. In our heart of hearts, our mind of minds, we understand that walking is not really exercise. It’s movement, and it’s a lot better than nothing, but it’s not a weight loss device.

Never lose sight of the fact that no matter which form of exercise you choose, you have to get your diet in line to lose the  fat. Boom.

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Life’s too short….

It happened again yesterday. I saw someone using the “life’s too short” argument to justify a hazardous lifestyle.

What is up with that kind of attitude?

I mean, I agree, life is too short, and that is why I am doing my best to try to make my life last as long as possible.

I suspect the life’s-too-short people are hedonists. They are existers, on this Earth for a short while, just trying to get by, extracting as much pleasure out of life as possible. They believe the living of life is an end unto itself. They don’t care whether they leave anything lasting behind.

I don’t know, and, honestly, I don’t harshly judge people who have that attitude. As long as they aren’t hurting anyone, they can do as they please. Life is short.

As I implied, though, I really don’t understand that way of thinking.

If I am only here for a short while, I want to try to make an impact on the world. I would like to be remembered as someone who influenced others, who helped people along the way. I’d like to be remembered as someone that people truly miss, rather than as someone who was simply chasing fun all the time.

So, yeah, I am not an “at least he died happy” person. Happiness implies a level of satisfaction that leads to complacency. I never want to be satisfied or complacent — I want to keep moving forward.

Life, to me, is a series of challenges — games, if you prefer. Loading the dishwasher so all the silverware gets clean. Making something delicious for dinner with ingredients I already happen to have on hand. Setting an unreasonable deadline for a project and finishing it on time. That’s how I live.

So, then, living beyond my maximum life expectancy, well, that seems like the biggest challenge of all, right?

We’ll see how that goes. Life’s too short. Indeed.

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Smoking — playing the odds ….

In a recent post, I off-handedly remarked that some people seem to play the odds with their health. “After all,” I remarked, “only 20% to 25% of smokers get lung cancer.”

No SmokingThis morning, as I reread my article, I realized that while that’s true to some extent, there are actually a couple of prevailing attitudes:

  • It can’t happen to me, so I’m not going to worry about it.
  • It will happen to me, so there’s nothing I can do about it.

It can’t happen to me
This attitude has merit. This people are playing the odds. They may be in a little bit of denial with the word “can’t”, but “probably won’t” is not outside the realm of rationality.

The problem is that, if you are pointing to individual ailments caused by smoking — heart disease, lung cancer, diabetes — well, sure, your chance of contracting one of those diseases is lower than not.

But I don’t want to play those odds, because we are talking about extremely deadly diseases.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC),

  • Smoking causes 20% of the deaths in the US. That’s 1 out of every 5 deaths — directly attributable to smoking.
  • Smoking causes about 90% of all lung cancer deaths in men, and 80% of all lung cancer deaths in women. 90% of all deaths from chronic obstructive lung disease are caused by smoking.
  • More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined.

Per that same article, the CDC also states that smoking increases the risk of

  • Coronary heart disease by 2 to 4 times
  • Stroke by 2 to 4 times
  • Men developing lung cancer by 23 times
  • Women developing lung cancer by 13 times
  • Dying from chronic obstructive lung diseases (such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema) by 12 to 13 times

How do you like those odds?

Ultimately, though, I think what made me quit smoking 20 years ago was not any of that. I just got tired of (1) being addicted to cigarettes, (2) smelling like cigarette smoke, and (3)

When smokers quit — what are the benefits over time?

According to The American Cancer Society, here is a timetable for what happens in your body when you quit (with references).

20 minutes after quitting

  • Your heart rate and blood pressure drop.

(Effect of smoking on arterial stiffness and pulse pressure amplification, Mahmud A, Feely J. Hypertension. 2003:41:183)

12 hours after quitting

  • The carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.

(US Surgeon General’s Report, 1988, p. 202)

2 weeks to 3 months after quitting

  • Your circulation improves and your lung function increases.

(US Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, pp.193, 194,196, 285, 323)

1 to 9 months after quitting

  • Coughing and shortness of breath decrease; cilia (tiny hair-like structures that move mucus out of the lungs) start to regain normal function in the lungs, increasing the ability to handle mucus, clean the lungs, and reduce the risk of infection.

(US Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, pp. 285-287, 304)

1 year after quitting

  • The excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a continuing smoker’s.

(US Surgeon General’s Report, 2010, p. 359)

5 years after quitting

  • Risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, and bladder are cut in half. Cervical cancer risk falls to that of a non-smoker. Stroke risk can fall to that of a non-smoker after 2-5 years.

(A Report of the Surgeon General: How Tobacco Smoke Causes Disease – The Biology and Behavioral Basis for Smoking-Attributable Disease Fact Sheet, 2010; and Tobacco Control: Reversal of Risk After Quitting Smoking. IARC Handbooks of Cancer Prevention, Vol. 11. 2007, p 341)

10 years after quitting

  • The risk of dying from lung cancer is about half that of a person who is still smoking.
  • The risk of cancer of the larynx (voice box) and pancreas decreases.

(A Report of the Surgeon General: How Tobacco Smoke Causes Disease – The Biology and Behavioral Basis for Smoking-Attributable Disease Fact Sheet, 2010; and US Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, pp. vi, 155, 165)

15 years after quitting

  • The risk of coronary heart disease is that of a non-smoker’s.

(Tobacco Control: Reversal of Risk After Quitting Smoking. IARC Handbooks of Cancer Prevention, Vol. 11. 2007. p 11)

There are a lot of reasons to quit smoking. As a smoker, you can either continue to play the odds, or you can quit now and get your body on the road to recovery. Up to you.