Category: General

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What’s your fitness motivator?

Everyone needs motivation, especially when it comes to working out and staying fit. I’m not talking about a personal trainer — although that’s nice if you can afford it — but something more internal. Real motivation is an inner drive that helps us get things done.

I have to tell you that I’m really not sure what my motivator is.

Shaun T says during one of the Insanity videos that he works out because “I wanna look good”. And he does look good. But that’s not what motivates me. Well, not primarily, anyway. Looking good is a nice by-product, no doubt, but I am not trying to sculpt my body.

The thing that keeps me trying to stay fit is my health. I really enjoy being healthy.

Yes, I know there is a difference between fitness and health. Jim Fixx is a famous example of that. Fixx had a big hand in starting the fitness revolution in the United States. He was a runner, a very fit guy, but … he dropped dead of a heart attack at the age of 52. Atherosclerosis. What are you gonna do about that? Diseases can get you, no matter how much you work out.

That’s where diet comes into play, and, because my motivator is health, I also am pretty strict about my diet.

Some people have events as motivators. Wedding days. Reunions. A marathon.

Those are all good motivators, but how many of us know a bride who lost a shitton of weight to look great on her wedding day, and then — uh oh — she is hardly recognizable 6 months later?

Some people’s motivator is a past event, such as a heart attack. That’ll wake you up, right?

But, you know, the further removed we get from that brush with death, the less real it seems. We start feeling good, and we reason that it’s okay to have just one bowl of ice cream. And it is! It really is okay to have one bowl of ice cream! But that one bowl often provides a slippery slope, and the next thing you know, we are back to our old habits.

The key to any motivator is longevity — it has to last a lifetime.

Besides “health”, another key motivator for me — and it’s certainly linked to health — is “no medications”.

I like that one, because health is so variable and difficult to measure, but I surely know when my doctor wants me to take a pill. (The other day a specialist apologized to me that there is no pill for tinnitus. No apology necessary, doc.)

“No meds” is what really what keeps me going. In fact, yeah, I think that “no meds” is probably my primary motivator, now that I think about it. I have an internal drive to stay off meds.

When I was on 2 blood pressure and 1 cholesterol medication back in 2007, my need to take those things with me and make sure I got them every day while on a cruise vacation made me go, “Hmmmmmm….” Then, when I looked at the vacation photos and saw how fat I really was, that put me over the edge and got me started down the path to fitness.

The fatness got me going, but the internal desire to stay off meds keeps me going. Right? If that were not true, once I was no longer fat, I’d lose my motivation, and … let the yo-yo’ing begin.

So, then, what is your motivator? Is it a short-term fix or is your motivator in it for the long haul? If you can find a motivator that lasts a lifetime, that’s the one that will keep you and your fitness goals on track.

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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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Fitness goals for 2013

I have compiled a list of fitness and dietary goals for myself for 2013. Some are firmer than others, but I thought you might be interested in what will be driving my fitness life in the year ahead.

  • Eat less processed foods. I really like pastas, breads, chips, nut butters, jars of organic sauces, but they are all processed, so during 2013 I am going to try to remove more of them from my diet. Instead of nut butters, how about whole nuts? Instead of brown rice pasta, why not just brown rice? Do I really need a jar of sauce, if I can slice up some tomatoes, olives, onions, garlic, and make a delicious sauce myself? Instead of chips, how about … no chips? (Why are chips so good?) Processed foods are convenient, for sure, but I want to reduce my unnatural sources of concentrated calories. Please note that I am reducing, not removing. I will still enjoy a good sandwich, a great pasta dish, or some almond butter on a pumpkin pie waffle. And some chips. Just not so often.
  • Skew my diet more toward alkaline. To stay alive, we need to maintain a neutral pH inside our bodies. We have systems in place that handle that for us, but it’s nice not to make them work too hard, and also nice to give them the raw materials they need to get the job done, so they don’t have to deplete minerals that might be put to better use. In general, we consume too many acidifying foods. Grains, meats, coffee & black tea (even decaf), and sweeteners — all those things acidify our bodies. I want to try to be more balanced by consuming more vegetables — especially greens; and fruits — especially citrus (acidic outside the body, but alkalizing within); and herbal & green teas.
  • Do more yoga. Yoga is good for me, I’m pretty sure about that. Plus, bonus, I really enjoy it. My current issue is not that I don’t get enough yoga — I do — but I want more. The problem is that I often want to be doing something more vigorous. Ideally, I’d do a vigorous workout and yoga on the same day. Hmmmmm….
  • Do heavy aerobics 3 times a week. This obviously goes hand in hand with the previous yoga goal. I enjoy heavy aerobics, but when I am not in a program of some sort, I often only do such a workout once or twice a week. I need more. Why? To keep the blood circulating, quickly, make sure it’s getting everywhere it needs to be, and to get the heart and lungs working overtime, so they can be prepared for when that might be necessary, like to fight off death or something.
  • Do a chest & back routine each week. I have a couple of chest & back workouts that I really like, but they take 90 minutes, including warmup and cool down, to do them right, so I’ve been ignoring them lately. But I need to get back into the habit. A strong back is important, and a strong chest helps ensure that tshirts don’t rest on my belly, even if my gut grows a bit as I age. Hey, it’s a thing. Once my tshirts stopped resting on my belly a year ago, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to slip backward. Okay, and chest/back balance is important, strengthwise.
  • Sleep more. I need to get to bed earlier. We’ll see how this works out. Overall, I am pretty pleased with my current sleep pattern, but sometimes I really do need a few more hours. I’d like to reduce the number of those times.
  • Drink less alcohol. I don’t drink to excess more than a few times a year, but I still would prefer not to drink as much as I do. For one thing, I think it’s just a waste of money. For another thing, I don’t see a lot of health benefits. A glass of red wine, a dark beer, a bit of rum from time to time is cool. But not too often. Again, I am not that firm on this, because I don’t believe the way I drink is detrimental to my health. But I could do with spending less money.

That’s where I am headed this year. How about you?

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Is your diet too acidifying?

While I’d heard about it for years, I became very closely acquainted with the concept of an acidifying diet this past summer while I was going through detox process. As I researched and read about it, I found out a few interesting things.

  1. Our bodies needs to maintain a balance between acid and base (alkaline) or we will die.
  2. Many (most?) acidic foods (like citrus fruits) actually have an alkalizing effect within the body.
  3. We, of course, have mechanisms in place to alkalize or acidify our bodies, whichever is necessary to maintain balance.
  4. The Standard American Diet is highly acidifying.

Fact number 4 above is the reason the detox I did focused a lot on alkalizing the body — most of us swing too far toward acidic, because if the foods we eat.

What are these acidifying foods?

  • Meats
  • Sugary beverages (including fruit juices) and diet sodas
  • Grains
  • Pastries
  • Alcohol
  • Milk and cheese
  • Regular and decaf coffee and black tea

Look familiar? Yeah.

How about some alkalizing foods?

  • Vegetables, especially greens
  • Legumes, especially soy beans
  • Fruits, especially citrus
  • Herbal and green teas

There are levels within each group. For example, beef is more acidifying than chicken, and kale is more alkalizing than a tomato, but you get the idea, right?

All those burgers, tacos, and steaks we eat, all that soda and beer we drink, the coffee we wake up with, well, those all serve to acidify our bodies.

Theres’ nothing wrong with consuming those acidifying foods, at least not in the context of this discussion of the body’s acid-alkaline state. I mean, I said it above: The body needs a balance, and being overly alkaline is just as dangerous as being overly acidic.

However, as we look at the list of acidifying foods, we can easily tell that the Standard American Diet is high is those, and relatively low in the alkalizing foods. We tend to prefer meat to veggies, pasta to legumes, coffee and black tea to herbal tea, and I think most of us will admit that we just don’t eat enough fruit.

I could give you a list of symptoms of an overly acidic body from the book  The Acid-Alkaline Diet, but, really, the list is quite extensive and it would also apply to many other ailments…. Okay, if you insist, here are a few:

  • Lack of energy
  • Feeling of depressions
  • Frequent infections
  • Sensitivity to high-pitched noises
  • Easily stressed
  • Headaches
  • Swelling of the eyes
  • Loose teeth
  • Mouth sores
  • Excess stomach acid
  • Dry skin
  • Skin gets irritated in sweaty areas
  • Hives
  • Leg cramps

What can we do about our acidifying diets? The answer is pretty simple: We need to substitute some of our acidifying foods for alkalizing ones.

Here some things you can do:

  • Limit coffee consumption, substituting green or herbal teas
  • Add lemon or lime juice to your water, although, keep in mind that while those juices are alkalizing agents inside the body, they are acidic in nature, and you probably don’t want acid washing over your teeth all the time, so do this once or twice a day only, or discuss it with your dentist
  • Eat more vegetables
  • Keep greens — kale, spinach — in your fridge and add them to whatever you eat. I buy the containers of cleaned organic baby kale and spinach and add them to just about everything, including sandwiches, pasta dishes, soups, salads
  • Drink less alcohol
  • Eat more fruits, especially avocados, although watch out for the high fat content of avocados
  • Use meat more as a garnish and for flavoring, rather than making it the main focus of a meal
  • Leave off the cheese

As with any change in your diet, it’s much easier to do this incrementally. Try it out for a few days a week, see if you feel any better. If you do feel better, alkalize more and more often. Hopefully, the feeling of well-being can keep you on track.

For me the changes were profound — softer, moister skin overall, especially around my heels and cuticles, and whiter eyes that don’t burn nearly as much as they used to. I should mention that my diet became more alkaline automatically as I switched to a plant-based diet, so there are more factors in play than a focus on alkalizing my body.

That’s the way it is with nutrition and the body, though. There are no silver bullets. With so many variables, both outside and inside our bodies, it’s not possible to say, for example, “Eat more avocados, and you’ll be okay,” or “Eat less meat, and you’ll be healthier.” We are all different, so the only thing to do is try things out, see what works.

If you eat a Standard American Diet, though, it’s safe to say your diet is too acidifying. If you don’t feel 100% all the time, alkalizing your diet may be just the thing you need. Give it a shot!

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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.