One Good Reason to Exercise - Life

A study by Booth, Roberts and Laye (2012) found, as other researchers have found, a link between activity and longevity. According to the study cited above, active adults have a 30% lower risk of premature death. They found that data gathered by anti-aging research supports an inverse relationship premature death and physical activity in adults. The human body was made to move. Sedentary lifestyles have a negative effect on cells, gene function, the immune system and human movement that cause accumulative dysfunctions that accelerate death.

Similar studies have found that active adults who follow a healthy lifestyle a 3 to 5 year end of life period of debilitation compared to a debilitation period of 8-15 years for sedentary adults. In short, regular physical activity allows you to live longer and healthier with the prospect of living independently about 3 to 5 times as long.

As a bonus, you look better, feel better and function better. Why would you not want to become active?

Sitting Yourself To Death

"Sitting is the new smoking." It is unlikely that very many outside the health and fitness community have heard this. Just what do they mean by that? Sitting is the new smoking means that for even regular exercisers, prolonged sitting has the same negative effect on health as smoking. You are what has been called an "active couch potato - Genevieve Healy, University of Queensland - and are only slightly, if any, less susceptible to the same health risks as those who are completely inactive. 

"Your body is designed to move," Hamilton (Marc Hamilton, Ph.D., Pennington Biomedical Research Center.) says. "Sitting for an extended period of time causes your body to shut down at the metabolic level." When your muscles, especially certain leg muscles, are immobile, your circulation slows. So you use less of your blood sugar and you burn less fat, which increases your risk of heart disease and diabetes. Indeed, a study of 3,757 women found that for every two hours they sat in a given work day, their risk for developing diabetes went up seven percent, which means their risk is 56 percent higher on days they sit for eight hours. And a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology reports that a man who sits more than six hours a day has an 18 percent increased risk of dying from heart disease and a 7.8 percent increased chance of dying from diabetes compared with someone who sits for three hours or less a day. 

Just how bad is it? If saying it is equivalent to being a smoker doesn't get your attention consider that Koster et al. measured sedentary time in 1906 subjects and found that after adjusting for MVPA the highest 25% of time spent in sedentary activity had 3.3 times the risk for all-cause mortality compared to those in the lowest 25%. Or, in very simple but accurate enough language, too much sitting, after making you ill, will kill you.

Assuming none of us are particularly fascinated with that prospect, the question is: What do we do? Studies have shown that 30 minutes of exercise daily has tremendous health benefits but that this alone will not reverse the negative effects of prolonged sitting. So, what is the answer? The answer is as simple as it is difficult; i.e. move. We have to move. We have to break up our sitting time. Research indicates that a minimum of 2 minutes walking, walking in place, will activate key muscles in the leg and avoid the the repercussions of prolonged sitting. The bonus to employers is that their employees are healthier, happier, more productive and take less sick time.

Some Things are Necessities

Aside from trying to avoid a cake and a half gallon of ice-cream a day, there is nothing more necessary to weight management that keeping a food diary. Everyone hates keeping a food diary. I have never met the person who said to me, "Oh, wow! You want me to keep a food diary. I always wanted to do that."

If food diaries are so hated, why do serious trainers and weight loss consultants always ask you to keep a food diary? Do we just enjoy annoying you? No! We ask you to keep a food diary for a couple of reasons.

First. with rare exception, and I do mean rare exception (having worked with several hundred clients I have never found an exception, it is that rare), we all underestimate how much we eat. We plan our meals well, and we may, though it is rarely the case, practice good portion control. Great! What did you drink? Have you had a snack? What did you snack on? Unless you keep a food diary, you very likely have no idea how many extra calories you take in from your drink and snacks. You often do not even remember snacking. There are the ever present peppermints we pop unwittingly into our mouths. We don't plan them; we may or may not remember eating them and maybe we only pop a couple a day. How bad can that be? They are only about 20 calories each, right? 20x2=40. OK, that still isn't so bad. But 40x30 days in a month = 1200 cal. In three months, you have enough extra calories to add a pound of fat to your body, 4 pounds in a year and 5 years into your desk job…let's see 5x4 = the answer to the bewildering question of where did this weight come from. Well, few people eat just two peppermints in extra calories a day but you get the point. If you have planned your meals to include you daily calories; then unwittingly add 20 calories twice a day to that…Yep!

Secondly, we often attempt to control calories without taking into consideration nutritional values. A hundred calories of candy and a hundred calories of fruit have the same caloric value. The difference is this: the one is slowly processed and provides vitamins, minerals, trace elements etc. to your nutritional needs while the other jacks up you blood sugar for a short time, zips through your system, and quickly leaves you craving another energy shot having added none of the nutrients needed to maintain a healthy body. Your trainer, weight management consultant or nutritionist simply cannot help you substitute good choices until they know what you are currently eating.

A word to the wise: When your coach asks you to keep a food diary, you sabotage the entire process by being dishonest. There was a lady in the gym where I trained who was about 60 pounds over her desired weight. She was not my client but she came to me one day and said, "I'm working really hard but I am not losing any weight. What do I need to do?" The obvious answer is that she needed to quit eating so much but I reserve that sage advice for clients with whom I have developed a relationship. I told her to keep a food diary for a week, including the weekend (very important) and perhaps we could figure out what she needed to do. A week later she brought me a food diary that, with little exaggeration claimed that for breakfast she had coffee and simply smelled the bacon, for lunch feasted on three grapes and a lettuce leaf; then for dinner finished her day with a baked chicken leg and a celery stick.

Basic rules for keeping a food diary:
1. If you put it in your mouth and swallow, write it down. Don't try to guess if it is good or bad. If you already had an idea about that, you wouldn't be seeking help.
2. Include your drink. I had an obese client who maintained a very healthy "food" eating plan. I discovered she was literally consuming two cups of sugar a day from her tea.
3. Do not forget the snacks however small they may be. There are about 10 calories in one potato chip and we all know no one eats just one chip. (Well, maybe my wife eats just one but she can also take one bite from a cookie and leave the rest for another bite the next day. A large cookie will dry and get tossed in the garbage before she eats it all. That just isn't right. Know what I mean?) If you go to a party over the weekend, count your chips. Yeah, I know, that deters you from eating as many.
4. This is important. Write down the time of day you eat (especially snacks) and how you were feeling at the time - i.e. hungry, tired, happy, sad, bored etc. Why you are snacking is as important as what you eat for a snack.

What Is Functional Training?

Functional training is a big buzz word around the fitness world nowadays. To some it is the holy grail, to others it is a bunch of nonsense. Most trainers and fitness fans are on the band wagon; a few think it is a lot of "sound and fury signifying nothing" advocated by idiots. The naysayers like to make the point that all exercise is functional. In a sense, that is true enough (we will get to that); in a profound sense it is simply a confession that they are too busy or too intellectually lazy to study the question. Alright, that no doubt P-Oed a few. If it hit a nerve, maybe you should ask yourself why.

Functional training is usually defined as training that mimics activities of daily life. We all have to engage in certain activities involving movement; e.g. standing, bending, reaching, walking, turning, bringing our hands to our mouths (which we probably do too often) etc. If we leave the definition of functional training at this point, then those who rant that all exercise is functional and the functional training movement is sound and fury have a point that will be hard to rebut.

I prefer to define functional training as exercises mimicking the activities of daily living that are done using proper form; i.e. correct dynamic and static posture. This means your trainer must have a good understanding of the human movement system. All exercise, then, is not functional. Exercise done using improper form is patently dysfunctional. The focus of  "functional training" is to undo the dysfunctional patterns of learned movement and retrain your body to move in the way it was designed to move;  thus alleviating and/or preventing the damage and chronic pain that inevitably accompany repeated dysfunctional movement.

When you have trained your body to move as it was designed, not only do you avoid the injuries and pain that follow dysfunctional movement, you improve the performance of both athletic activities and the activities of daily living. Proper human movement, requires less effort, provides an economy of energy and minimizes the likelihood of injury and chronic pain.

If you are self-training or considering self-training, do yourself a favor and hire a trainer knowledgeable in the human movement system to assess you. Just because it feels right does not mean it is right. If you have developed a pattern of  wrong movement, it will feel right and the right movement will feel wrong until you have corrected it. However right the wrong movement may feel, if left uncorrected it will not only negatively impact performance but will eventually lead to injury and chronic pain. A few half-hour sessions with a good trainer is money well spent.

If you have developed patterns of improper movement, that includes poor posture, you will do well to find a good 'functional trainer' or corrective exercise specialist, (Some make a difference between functional training and corrective exercise; I don't. Training proper function is correctional)

A Healthy Life View

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, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren whom I will see less often now. When I arrived at my 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 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 have done when driving beginning with the many drives between SC and FL when my younger brother was dying. 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."