Levels of Excercise

by Mark Allen   

       

One common decision people make on a daily basis with their exercise is the amount they will do. The old government recommendation use to say we need 20 minutes three times per week for good health. They have changed that and now suggest 30 minutes per day to ward off chronic disease, 60 minutes for good health, and up to 90 minutes a day for those trying to lose weight.  A 90-minute workout for some might be like a climb up Everest, but for others that is just their warmup.  A triathlete training for an Ironman will do a 5-hour bike ride on the weekend without blinking. How does that level stack up on the overall health meter? Let me give you the Fit Soul, Fit Body thoughts on all of these levels.

One of the goals for most people who exercise is to either maintain a healthy weight or even lose some unwanted pounds. And to do that, we need to activate the fat burning mechanisms in the body and keep them firing day to day. Research suggests that doing moderate cardiovascular exercise where your heart rate is elevate for a minimum of 20-minutes will keep the fat burning engine set in the “on” position. This is a minimum, however. To really drop weight through exercise, it can mean doing 60-90 minutes of exercise most days of the week to really shed the pounds.

That may be an amount that is out of your realm. If it is, you can employ a simple technique throughout the day to supplement whatever amount of exercise you are able to put in. You ready for it? It’s called “Standing Up”. Yep, it’s that simple. We have an enzyme in our body called lipoprotein lipase. It is an enzyme that helps us burn stored body fat. If a person is inactive for even one day this enzyme’s activity is reduced by a whopping 94%!

Keeping this enzyme activated and burning fat requires standing and moving around. So fidget away those unwanted pounds with a number of short walks throughout the day, by carrying things from one spot to another, by adding in a few trips going up and down stairs or just about anything that breaks up the kind of day many people find themselves in where they have a statue-like gaze at the computer screen for hours on end. Even if you do exercise the minimum governmental recommendation of 30-minutes per day, by adding in lots of little trips around the office, the house, or walking in a park where you engage the large muscles in the legs and gluteus area, you have a much better chance of making positive body composition changes.

For longevity purposes, there is a strong correlation between burning at least 300 calories per day through using those large muscles and living a long life. This equates to about three miles of walking daily. Those who live the longest AND have the best overall health seem to up that amount to at least an hour a day of exercise. But the exercise benefit curve does top out at about three hours per day. Those who engage in lots of endurance athletics and work out more than about three hours per day end up with immune system suppression, which can lead to illness. Then if the exercise is at high intensity, if done for too long of a period of time the person can actually lose lean muscle, have depression, lose motivation, have very low energy levels, and eventually get totally burned out or injured to the point where they cannot exercise.

Bottom line is that using our bodies for movement is an ancient sign that food was available and plentiful and that we were out foraging and gathering. This is when we would lean out and have a good positive attitude because we didn’t need to store up body fat if there was a bounty of food and there was no reason to feel depressed when survival was easier. This is the opposite of what happened in the leaner months when food was scarce. In ancient times that was when people would sit around more to conserve energy which led to reduced fat burning and a lower metabolic rate to spare the body from wasting away and the mood was more depressive and lacking in motivation to help preserve precious body stores of energy.

Fast forward to the modern world. If we engage our ancient times-of-plenty genetics and move around throughout the day every day, our genes trigger the release of the happiness hormones as well as burn body fat faster. 

Feed Your Soul, Then the Body

Wholesome health, a balanced approach

by Mark Allen

Perhaps the most universal New Year's Resolution is to drop a few pounds and change body composition in a positive direction. Certainly one tool that gets used for this quest is to add in some extra workouts. Yet it is usually only one part of what will help someone succeed in shifting their composition and losing weight. You see, the body is so efficient at adapting to training, that over time it uses less and less energy to do the same amount of work. For example, a longer walk or run in the beginning of the season may burn 400-700 calories/hour, but later in the year you will only use half that. Exercise is absolutely essential for good health, but usually needs some additional support for weight loss.

Portion Size

The number one tool for helping drop a few unwanted fat pounds is regulating portion size at meals. And the most effective way to reduce serving sizes without feeling like you are depriving yourself is to find smaller dishes on which those portions are placed. Humans have a tendency to eat all of what is put on the their plates. So if you are trying to reduce your overall consumption, start out by putting less in front of yourself. Then if you are someone like me, who knows you will almost always go back for seconds (mostly for the taste), curb that initial serving even a little more so that you do get to go back for round two guilt-free, and in the end still reduce the overall amount you eat.

Slow Down To Eat Less

Next, eat a little slower. As we said in our book, eating is not a speed sport! If you are like me you probably won't be able to do this by chewing more even though that is usually the main recommendation on how to eat slower. An alternate solution is to just put less on your fork with each bite. Lots of smaller mouthfuls will end up reducing the speed with which you eat.

The Smart Snack

Remember the old thing your mother used to yell at you when you were a kid? "Stop snacking before the meal, you'll ruin your appetite!" Well, that is indeed true and something you can use to your advantage in weight loss. Try eating a nutritious snack of about 100 calories 20-minutes prior to the meal that is coming up. This will usually take the ravenous edge off your hunger with the result that the amount you end up eating overall is much less than if you did not have that snack and went into your meal with a completely empty stomach.

Drink Water

Often hunger is a masked sensation for needing water. Make sure you are drinking enough of this precious liquid throughout the day. Also try a glassful first when you start to feel the hunger pangs coming on. Even in the winter getting enough water can be tough. Most heating systems dry the air out, making it just as important to hydrate now as it is in the summer.

Gauging When To Stop

There are many ways to judge the time to stop eating. If a person stops when they are full they will eat significantly more calories throughout the day than if they stop eating at the point where they no longer experience hunger. Experiment with this subtle but important difference. Start by eating a little slower as we just mentioned. Then notice when you begin to no longer feel hunger, which is a different sensation than what you will feel like if you keep going and feel full.

The catch to this strategy is that if you are indeed able to push the plate away once you experience that your hunger has subsided, you will also find yourself getting hungry sooner after the meal. This is normal and fine to have happen. Just make sure that you are prepared for it and have some good healthy snacks or another small meal at hand when you do get that hungry feeling back again.

Pattern Eating

Next see if there are any overeating patterns that you can change. When do you find that you eat too much? Is it when you are alone? Is it when you get together with friends for a meal? How about when you are bored or stressed? Whenever that is, try to come up with another go-to activity that re-patterns what you do in those trigger situations.

If you eat when alone, see if there is something else that you can do that soothes your soul and gives you satisfaction. If it happens when you are with friends, perhaps going for a walk or just simply staying out of the kitchen can do the trick. If stress causes you to eat too much, use other calming techniques to help take the edge off and change the response to a tough time away from the urge to eat. This can be as simple as taking a walk or drinking in the colors of a sunset first. Stick with it long enough to detect if indeed your body was in need of food or if you were reaching for food as a soothing mechanism.  

Feed Your Soul, Then Your Body

Then finally, eating is medicine for the body when our souls are being fed as well. However, many of us have eaten in an attempt to feed a starved inner being. Even taking a few moments to walk outside and breathe in the air with a sense of gratitude that you are alive can shift that feeling and feed your soul with a positive thought. Then the hunger you feel can be that of your body.

The Voice of Food

by Mark Allen

For years I was in pursuit of a crown that was held by an athlete who was renowned for his dietary discipline. His name was Dave Scott, and his extremism in eating lead him to among other things rinse his cottage cheese before he ate it, to rid it of any excess fat held in the cream. Me? Well, my claim to dietary fame was less exemplary. I was known as a patron of the sacred chocolate chip cookie. “Self-restraint” was never mentioned in the same breath with “chocolate chip cookie” when I was speaking.

Dave’s methods did seem to have merit. By 1989, Scott had amassed an arsenal of six Ironman victories and I was at zero. Perhaps I should have taken a clue earlier and ditched the cookies for some squeaky-clean cottage cheese. But eventually I held up the white flag. I wasn’t going to follow his blueprint to the letter, but I thought I should at least go cold turkey with the cookies.

I made a pact with myself. I would not eat, touch, make or otherwise come in contact with a chocolate chip cookie for six weeks. Someone once told me it takes six weeks to change a pattern, so I thought why not! Six weeks without a cookie would not be easy for me, but if it meant victory in Kona, then so be it. After all, it wasn’t rinsing my cottage cheese!

Immediately the most amazing transformation took place. Everywhere I went I saw chocolate chip cookies for sale. At the gas station, in a display at the checkout in the market, in the airports, everywhere!

But gradually over my six-week cookie-free diet, my cravings for them slipped into the unknown and they were replaced by something I never knew I had. It was a whole spectrum of cravings that were fine tuned messages for what my body really needed. What had once been one huge overall urge for a cookie had now become about twenty similar but very distinct cravings for all things healthy. One day it might be a need for more protein, another for extra healthy carbs and the next a simple need for more water. The blare of a cookie craving was gone and I could finally hear the underlying whispers for all things good.

So I put the challenge to you. If there is a nemesis in your cupboard, drop it in the recycling and go on a six-week journey that will lead to understanding the language of your body’s food needs. We are hardwired for wisdom with an inner voice that knows how much food is healthy for our bodies, and what kind of food is going to bring us into our personal body balance each and every meal.

If you do give this a whirl, here are a few tips. First, giving up one indulgence doesn’t give you free range to replace it with another. When the craving first yells out, and it will indeed try its best to break down your resolve, replace it with something totally unrelated to food. Go for a short walk or a workout. Visit a garden or a forest or a park, river, stream, mountain, grassy patch at the end of the block, or anywhere else that has a vivid reminder that nature is happening all around us and use that to put the mute button on the craving.

Second, listen to your body every single day when it sounds like it is calling out for your temptation, then ask: what is it really calling for? What healthy, wholesome, and yes it can be delicious food or fluid is your body really in need of.

Then finally, be looking for the real reward at the end of the road. No, it isn’t going to be license to go out immediately at the end of your six-week quest and stock up on that one thing you have eliminated from your diet. The true reward will be the ability to interpret all the wavelengths of your body’s food cravings. You will understand the messages that lead to positive eating habits. The task will then be to honor them. Bon Appetite!

Finding Your Level of Fitness

by Mark Allen

One of the first questions about exercise that people have is how much they should actually do. Is 20-minutes a day, three times a week enough? How about overdoing it? Is a daylong bike ride too much? I want to lose weight. How much exercise do I need to do to accomplish that? Here are a few suggestions that will address all of these questions.

The first level of exercise goes something like this: any amount is better than none! If you are completely sedentary, even going for a short walk occasionally will be better than never doing a thing. There is basically no negative to small amounts of exercise and usually a positive response in overall health and wellbeing.

Next up is the amount that will give you the greatest benefits in terms of longevity. This comes about when a person burns about 300 calories per day through exercise, through moving their body. This is about the equivalent of walking or jogging 2.5-3 miles or doing any kind of aerobic activity for around 30-45 minutes, at a comfortable moderate pace.

You can take this to the next big gain by doing some form of exercise up to about one hour most days of the week. Research has shown that those who both live the longest and have optimal health have adopted this level of consistency with their movement and exercise. Again, that is one hour of exercise most days of the week. This can be done all in one shot, or if you are like many people, they find that breaking it up into two shorter sessions throughout the day is of equal physiological benefit and can actually help keep the feeling of Fit Soul intact from morning to night by offering a few chances throughout the day to take a true break from the responsibilities of life and get outside to absorb the beauty of life going on day and night.

Can a person put in too much exercise time? Definitely! What level this is will certainly be based on your current fitness. But if you are one of the select few who have tons of time to devote to exercise, the cutoff of true positive benefit seems to happen at about three hours. Over three hours of exercise in a day has shown to reduce immune function. So proceed with one eye on your overall health if this is the category you are in.

Is exercise the solution to weight loss? It can certainly be part of the answer, but research is now showing that it is usually not the entire solution, that is unless you are one of those who is fit enough to fall in that last category of training several hours each day. You can think of it in these terms. A pound of fat stores 3,500 calories. A 160 lb person would have to run just over a marathon in order to burn that amount of calories, and this is just to lose one pound of body fat. If you have say 50 extra, well, you can do the math. It's a lot of exercise and for most people, between lifestyle commitments and bodies that may just not cooperate with three hour training sessions, looking to exercise to be THE answer to weight loss is unrealistic. In such cases, nutrition becomes the missing piece of the puzzle. (more of this in our book and in future issues)

However, exercise can definitely be part of the solution. Adding lean muscle through exercise helps burn more calories even when you are sitting still. Burning even a few more calories daily through exercise can assist in body composition changes by supporting any reduction in portion size a person makes. And most of all, exercise is definitely a big factor in gaining a Fit Body, which creates a more positive mood, which then gives one more energy and the ability to seek out healthy choices in all areas of life, which is a very positive feedback loop!