Popular Weight Management Myths

Two of the most common popular misconceptions about weight management (made myth by advertisers) are:

Myth 1 - You can exercise yourself thin (invariably followed by buy this…and lose 10 lbs in 10 days")

Truth: No! and No! While it is theoretically possible to exercise yourself thin, and a few have the time to do that, the reality of actually doing so is a different matter. Losing one pound per week requires deleting 3500 calories a week, 500 calories per day, from you plate or burning 3500 calories more per week than you are consuming. That doesn't sound so mythical until you realize that, depending on your weight and the speed at which you walk, it means walking an extra 4-5 hours each day. You can cut that time in half by running but…well, you see the problem here.

Myth 2  - You can be fit and healthy if you eat right (you can get the book for only $12.99 if you order in the next half hour).

Truth: OK, you may lose weight. Fit and healthy? No! Nope! Not happening. Dieting as we normally think of it; i.e. the fad diets, to lose 10 pounds in two weeks, if followed strictly, may work for some - for two weeks. We all know what happen after that. The demon returns and brings a friend with him and the 10 lb. you lost somehow grew to 12 lbs. a month later. Add to that the fact that most fad, fast weight loss diets restrict some needed nutrient. In short, fad diets cannot be the basis for a long-term healthy eating weight maintenance plan. Just don't disappoint yourself by going there. Hippocrates said "Let your medicine be your food and your food be your medicine." - or something very close to that. There is much truth in that. What we eat is as important as the calories consumed - perhaps, in a sense, more so. While it is true that bottom line, your weight is a matter of calories in and calories out. Calorie for calorie, nutrient dense, high fiber foods, and complex carbohydrates encourage eating less because they are more satisfying and are, for want of a better way of putting it, slow release. Simple carbohydrates and low fiber, nutrient poor foods will give you a quick burst of energy; however, they just as quickly burn off leaving you reaching for a snack. And that snack is almost invariably a simple carbohydrate to get your blood glucose back up.

But, Yes! It is possible to get thin by diet alone. Possible is not probable, and the fact is that few who lose weight by diet alone manage to keep it off. However, as true as that is, it overlooks the fact that the human body was made to move and not moving it will destroy it. While it is possible to lose weight, at least temporarily, by diet alone, it is not possible to get fit and healthy by diet alone.

Really? Seriously? Yes! Recent studies by numerous reseachers have found that maintaining a healthy weight but living a sedentary lifestyle will put you at the same risk for heart disease as an active smoker.  (see note below)

Truth: Maintaining a healthy weight and a healthy body requires following both a healthy diet and an active lifestyle. You will neither eat yourself healthy nor exercise yourself thin. A healthy lifestyle is a balance of good nutrition and proper exercise. (See post Why Should I Do Resistance Training?)

FYI: The South Beach and Mediterranean "Diets" are not diets at all in the commonly understood meaning of a diet. They are both excellent eating plans that provide a balance of good nutrients. That said folks, like any other diet, the bottom line is portion, portion, portion. Calories in and calories out.

Note: Further research (ASCM et al) has found that 30-60 minutes of exercise daily will not by itself overcome the consequence of sitting for prolonged periods of time. If you are in a sedentary job, a job that requires sitting for long periods of time, improving your health and reducing the risks of cardiovascular disease can be as simple as walking in place or simply standing when taking a phone call for a couple of minutes every hour or two. Learn to stand and walk when handling phone calls -if you need to make notes, you can actually bend over and do that. Get up and go to the water fountain and/or the restroom every couple of hours. If you go to the water fountain and drink water as you should, going to the restroom will take care of itself. Not only will the trip to the water fountain keep you moving every couple of hours but it will cure one of the most prevalent nutritional problems Americans suffer; that is, chronic dehydration.

Eat well, move more and enjoy good health.

Life Happens

Written almost four years back, I though this worth a repost as a reminder that simply breathing is not life.

It has been an unusually busy year of doing nothing. It happens. I just found this in my drafts and thought it worth a long delayed publish.

This is a different sort of post today. It comes on the end of a week full of life. It is a bit long. Perhaps something can be learned from it.

In the space of five days, I left my tenure at the Y to seek a new adventure yet to be defined, leaving behind friends and adopted family, those with whom I have labored and loved, and given my age, their age and unforeseen circumstances, those whom I will likely never see again in this life. I drove to FL to see family, cousins, my children living there, grandchildren and great-grandchildren whom I will see less often now. When I arrived at my first youngest daughter's, Sasha, my oldest great-grandbaby ran out to meet me. A pretty little girl sometimes too mature for her age. Life circumstances sometimes does that.

Friday night I stopped by the hospital to see my oldest living cousin. I was blessed to grow up in close proximity to my cousins. Seventeen of us grew up on and around my grandfather's farm. When I started school my nuclear family moved nearer the school I would be attending and another half-dozen of us cousins lived and grew to adults within a block of one another. I suppose if no one had told us differently we might have thought we were all brothers and sisters living in different houses. We were as much at home in the houses of our aunts and uncles as we were in our own homes. We don't see each other often anymore but the bond of close cousins, like the bond of brothers and sisters, cannot be broken by time and space - nor death itself.

There are moments in life that you take with you forever. Friday night held one of those moments. I had not seen Carol, my oldest living cousin at the time, since her father died and, truth be known, we didn't communicate very often. If you have close cousins you know that doesn't matter much. They are your cousins. When I came into her room, Carol was asleep. When her daughter told her I was there, she awakened, they said, for the first time that day and her face brightened in recognition. I leaned over to give her a hug; in return I got a smile and a kiss on the cheek. She died at 1PM the next day as I was driving to Pensacola to see children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Playing with Gavyn and little Kane, the two youngest of my great-grandbabies, I thought of the passing of years and generations. Closing lines from my favorite poem, appropriately enough written by a long distant cousin, a contemporary of my great-great-grandfather Tennyson, came to mind:

"Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

My wife has gone ahead of me to Utah and my youngest daughter is a world away in Tokyo; so I left her baby; i.e. Kira, her dog we had been keeping, with my niece who adopted her and then I drove back home to SC to finish packing for the move to Utah. An 8 hour drive home alone gives much time for reflection, reminiscing, and counting blessings. "Test me in this, says the LORD Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it." As I drove I listened to the sound track from Somewhere In Time - as I did with the many drives between SC and FL the year and a half my younger brother was dying of brain cancer. Eight hours is hardly enough time to begin a count of blessings. How does one begin to assess the value of family and friends in 8 hours, 8 days or a lifetime? Millions will not buy one moment of it. My younger brother's oft repeated advice to me during his last year: "Tell those you love often that you love them. You only have a short time to do that."

Why Should I Do Resistance Training?

Why should I do resistance training? That question came up today in a setting in which I could only give a brief answer. Posting a blog article on the question seems a good place to give a more complete answer and give those who asked the question, as well as others who may have posed the same question to themselves, something they can hold on to and think about. There are distinct benefits to be gained from resistance or strength training that cannot be gained from aerobic training alone. In fact, aerobic training alone can potentially exacerbate sarcopenia, one of the health hazards faced by those who do not do resistance training. Below is a list of proven benefits of resistance training.

Resistance training promotes muscle hypertrophy - a somewhat unnecessary way of saying it promotes an increase in muscle size of 20% to 45%. Aside from the fact that it makes guys look buff, not itself a health benefit, what is the advantage of increasing muscle size?
1. Muscle is metabolically active. It burns calories. Other cells only vacuum up your unused calories and stores them as fat to be used later - maybe. We call those fat cells. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even at rest, and the fewer left-over calories you have to be stored as fat. That is good. It is good not only for the way you look and the way you feel; it is good for your health and especially your heart.
2. Increasing muscle size help control and slow sarcopenia (the loss of muscle). In early to mid thirties men and women begin to lose muscle mass of about 1% per year. That does not seem like such a big deal; however, very few are found alive once they pass the 40% lean body mass line. Think about that. If you begin to lose muscle mass at a 1% rate when you are 35 years old and do nothing to correct or slow the process, 75 years old is it. If you did little in your teens and twenties to increase your muscle mass and are still doing nothing, the process can begin as early as 30 and increase at a slightly faster rate.
3. Resistance training helps increase and maintain strength allowing you to enjoy independence and activities late into life. 

4. No ladies, unless you ingest large quantities of testosterone and/or steroids, you are not going to become muscle bound.

Resistance training stimulates bone growth and may be the number one preventative measure you can take to avoid osteoporosis. Because women begin with smaller thinner bone than men and suffer a sharp decrease in bone protecting estrogen at menopause, osteoporosis is much more prevalent in women. That said, listen up guys, men are not immune to osteoporosis and the less skeletal loading men do the more susceptible they are to osteoporosis. As it is with the promotion of muscle growth, the earlier in we life begin skeletal loading; i.e. the sooner we begin activities that promote bone health and thickness, the better prepared we are for later years.  Because effectively stimulating bone growth needs progressive overload and load variation as well as the targeting of skeletal areas most susceptible to failure due to bone loss, seeking a personal trainer may be a good choice.

Resistance training has a positive impact on weight management. By decreasing body fat and increasing metabolically active fat-free mass as well as increasing post-exercise energy expenditure resistance exercise encourages the maintenance and progression of weight loss. 

Resistance training improves glucose tolerance, makes muscles more sensitive to insulin and helps prevent and control Type II diabetes as well as aiding in controlling Type I diabetes.

Resistance training helps promote healthy changes in blood lipid profiles; i.e. cholesterol levels.

Studies referenced: Staron et al., 1991;  Conroy, Kraemer, Maresh, and Dalshy, 1992; Young and Steinhard, 1995; Kokkinos and Hurley, 1990; Hurley et al, 1988; Smutck, Reece and Kokkinos, 1993