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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.

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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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To reach your goals, you have to prioritize them

I had an email conversation the other day with a very good friend of mine. He owns his own business, which is struggling right now, but he’s getting it back off the ground. He’s found a little traction, so, in a moment of optimistic reality checking, he decided to make a list of business goals. He put some very specific things in his goal sheet, including numbers for where he should be tomorrow, in 6 months, in a year, in 2 years, in 5 years, and in 10 years.

All in all, I thought my friend’s goals for his business were realistic and attainable. They were well-thought out, and I really enjoyed seeing that he is putting some time into figuring out where his business should go.

When I was done reading through the goals, though, I emailed him back.

It’s great to have goals. Now you need to make plans to accomplish them. For example, if your goal is a new customer tomorrow, what exactly will you do to try to make that happen?

I didn’t hear from him after that…. Perhaps he’s just busy making those plans.

Even though I’ve written in the past that goals may be a problem for some people, I really do believe that it’s important to have them. But you know what is even more important? Taking action to reach those goals.

Let’s use an example goal of “Lose 10 pounds by June 30th”.

How can you reach that goal? If you are a fast-food junkie, maybe you could plan only to eat fast food on Wednesdays.

That might work!

Now, then, unless you execute the plan, the goal is about worthless.

Let’s look at that seemingly simple plan: Cutting back to eating fast food only on Wednesdays.

You may look at that and think, “I can do that. I only eat fast food 4 days a week now. Cutting back to 1 day would be easy.” Will it? Seems like it should be, especially since you’ve already decided it’s a good idea.

The first week goes great! Your resolve is strong and you have a pretty good plan.

Over the weekend, you pick up some healthy foods at the grocery store. You get up early enough every day to make yourself a real breakfast and prepare a lunch to take to work. After work, you enjoy making dinner, trying new foods. You don’t miss your McMuffins, Whataburgers with cheese, and finger-lickin’ good chicken. Hell, you even skip fast food on Wednesday, because you feel so good about how you are eating!

Then comes the busy weekend. You go to a movie with your family. Everyone wants to go to go to Sonic, and you reason, “Well, I skipped my Wednesday fast food day, I’ll just have it today.” That’s cool.

Monday morning rolls around again, and you realize you are out of breakfast foods, because you didn’t get to the store over the weekend. You make your box lunch with the last of your lunch fixin’s, but you are starving, so you say to yourself, “I’ll just have my fast-food day today instead of Wednesday,” and you grab some breakfast tacos on the way in to work.

You end up working late and can’t get home for dinner — good thing this is your fast food day, you think, as you snarf that Big Mac and fries. You’re so beat as you head home that you don’t stop at the grocery store to pick up some healthy breakfast and lunch foods.

The next day, you hit a drive-thru for breakfast again, and you say to yourself, “Well, this week is a bust. I’ll get back on it next week.”

But you never do.

I cannot tell you how many times that scenario played out in my life. Maybe not exactly that way, but pretty close.

So … what happened?

The goal was there. The plan was there. This thing failed, however, in the execution of the plan.

If you have a fitness goal, that’s great, but that only puts you part of the way there. Creating a plan is important, too, but, of course, the execution of that plan is the most important piece of the puzzle.

How can you be more successful?

Prioritize your fitness. I wrote a post about that before, but let’s look at the concept here, in terms of the practical example above.

The priorities were in place the first week. You hit the store for food. You made sure you had enough time to make yourself breakfast and lunch. You were cooking great dinners.

The plan started to go awry, however, with the fast food on Saturday. Wednesday was supposed to be “Fast Food” day. Saturday is not Wednesday. However, your family’s desires took the priority away from your fitness goal.

The weekend slipped away without your going to the store to pick up more healthy food options for your breakfasts and lunches. That was your restful Sunday taking the priority away from your fitness goal.

Monday morning fast food? Well, you knew that was wrong, but when that laps spilled over into Tuesday, well, that was your fitness goal being out-prioritized by everything else in your life.

And that is how we fail. We fail to put fitness at the top of the priority list.

You may say, “But, Steve, dining with my family is more important to me than quitting fast food.” Okay, fine, that’s valid. I guess. Right? That’s a decision for you to make.

I can tell you from my own experience that family desires, job requirements, relaxation needs — those are all things that are high on my priority list. But when I finally decided to get fit, I had to move fitness to the top of the list.

“Thanks for making that birthday cake for me, mom, but I’m not going to have any.” Do you think that was an easy conversation? No. But this is my fitness — and my health — we are talking about, so it’s my responsibility. If that means I won’t be eating cake, pizza, and hot wings with the family, so be it.

You may be able to be less strict. You may be able to at least have a bite of the cake, a half-slice of the pizza, just one of the wings. If you can do that, more power to you.

But if you are able to do that, that’s great, and it shows that you have prioritized fitness. When you prioritize fitness, you’ll be well on your way to executing your fitness plan, and, therefore, achieving your fitness goals!