Fitness in the Balance

Building Blocks, Part One

2012-02-02T18:14:00.000-08:00

If you could improve your physical self in just one way, what would you do? Would you want to be stronger? Have more endurance? Be able to play with your kids for longer? Be able to get out of bed without feeling stiff and sore?

Stop for a moment and think about what your number one physical goal is. I know I talk a lot about achieving balanced fitness, where you strive to improve multiple areas of your physical and mental well-being at once, but for today let’s put that aside. If you had to choose one goal, what would it be? The answer will tell you your biggest area of weakness, and also what you need to do about it. Once you achieve that goal, you’ll also be more likely to want more, and you’ll be in the perfect position to add other dimensions to your workouts.

This will start a series of posts looking at specific fitness goals and how to achieve them. Once we’ve gone through the list, we’ll double back and see how they can be combined to create a comprehensive fitness program.

Strength – Maybe your most important goal is to improve your strength. You may have noticed that you had trouble moving boxes around the last time you cleaned the basement. Or how sore you were after the last time you shovelled the driveway. If that’s you, improving your strength is probably a good idea. I’m not talking about becoming an Olympic powerlifter. You need to be able to perform the activities of your daily life without faltering or paying the price afterwards. While the level of strength needed will vary from person to person, the need for a solid baseline of physical strength is clear.

Ok, you want to get stronger. What do you do about it?

Strength manifests itself, at its most basic level, as a person’s ability to move something heavy. A box, a shovel of wet snow, that last party guest who won’t take the hint. You improve your ability to do those things by, well, moving stuff that’s heavy. Luckily, the fitness industry has created many tools you can use for this purpose. Dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells…they can all help you get stronger. And don’t forget the one piece of exercise equipment you carry around with you all day: your body. Bodyweight exercises are worthy of their own post, so here we’ll talk about how lifting weights like dumbbells can increase your strength. Let’s look at some dos and don’ts:

DO use a challenging weight. This goes for both men and women. So often you hear women say they don’t want to lift weights because they don’t want to get too muscular. I can tell you here and now that you have absolutely nothing to worry about. You know those women bodybuilders, the ones who basically look like guys in bikinis? Trust me when I say they didn’t get that way accidentally. They have worked for years on their bodies, trying to build as much muscle as possible. Many of them also use anabolic steroids to counter the naturally lower levels of testosterone women possess. So, if your goal is to get stronger, don’t be afraid of weights. Or, if you don’t have any weights, resistance bands. They work too, especially if you don’t have a lot of space or you travel a lot. Instead of choosing a challenging weight, choose a challenging level of resistance.

DON’T do endless repetitions of each exercise. If your goal is to build strength (as opposed to endurance, speed, muscle size or explosive power), find a weight where you struggle to get 6 to 8 repetitions with good form. If you are doing less than that, odds are you’ve picked a weight that’s too heavy and your form is suffering. If you’re doing more than that, you won’t be targeting the muscles properly to get stronger. You’ll build stamina, which isn’t what you’re looking for. Remember too that if you’re doing 30 repetitions of each exercise, your workout will end up taking a lot longer than if you do fewer, harder reps.

DO compound exercises. There are exercises everyone knows. Things like biceps curls have been around forever, and people like them because they’re familiar. And while they will help build stronger biceps, you can make more efficient use of your time by focusing on movements that use more than one muscle at once. Let’s say you want to get stronger legs. You could do leg extensions on a machine at the gym. That will strengthen the front of your thighs. Or you could do squats, which will strengthen the front and back of your thighs, your calves, your glutes, and your entire core. Plus, in the real world, you’re more likely to actually use a squatting motion when you’re picking things up or playing on the ground with rambunctious little ones.

DON’T neglect your nutrition. I’ve said many times before that if you want your body to perform at a high level, you can’t feed it unhealthy food. As you are training to get stronger, your muscles will need fuel. As you lift weights, you actually create microscopic tears in the individual muscle fibres. The body needs the right foods to repair this damage and make the muscle stronger. Right after working out, your body needs both fast-acting carbohydrates and protein. There are a lot of post-workout drinks on the market, but the easiest and cheapest thing I’ve found to do is to mix a protein shake using apple juice instead of water or milk. (If you’re going to try this, you’ll want to stay away from chocolate flavours of protein powder.) Read the labels, and aim for about 10 grams of protein to 30 – 40 grams of carbohydrate. That will probably be half a scoop of powder in a little more than 8 ounces of juice. Beyond post-workout nutrition, just make healthy choices. Go the Nutrition page of the website for help with this.

DO take time to recover between workouts. Yes, you want to get stronger. But your body makes its gains during recovery, not when you’re grunting through that last set of shoulder presses. If you’re new to weightlifting, aim for a full-body workout no more than three times a week. This will give you the chance to recover properly before you start again. It may be that in the first couple of weeks your body can only handle two workouts a week. If that’s the case, listen to what your body is telling you. When you’re ready (meaning not too sore afterwards), add a third day.

DON’T fall victim to the latest exercise gizmo or gadget. Sure the AbMax3000 looks cool, but it doesn’t do anything you can’t already do with a bit of floor space and some dedication. No one ever had an easier time loading a moving truck after spending twenty minutes with a Thigh Master. There’s a reason the “old school” exercises are still around: they work.

If improving your strength is your primary fitness goal, these tips will help. If you are just starting out and need some help finding specific exercises, or have other questions, please send me an e-mail and I’ll get in touch with you.

NEXT: Endurance training.

Functional Fitness

2011-07-29T14:06:00.000-07:00

Why do you want to get in shape?

Is it to be stronger, or have greater endurance, or fend off injury and aging, or lose weight, or simply look better? If you’re like most people, more than one of those reasons applies to you. For me, probably every one of those reasons was part of my decision to improve my health. But how do we get there? How do we get from Point A, existing through a sedentary and unhealthy lifestyle, to Point B, actually living every day to the fullest with a strong body and mind?

Walk into your local health club and you’ll see lots of people using one of the most popular methods out there: lifting weights. Biceps curls, leg extensions, triceps kickbacks...I can pretty much guarantee that wherever you are right now, there are people at a gym near you doing those exact moves. Unfortunately for them, that is NOT the most effective way to get from Point A to Point B.

The reason so many people try to get in shape by lifting weights, but ultimately get discouraged and stop, is because they’re doing small isolation movements that will have almost no effect on their body as a whole. Sure, biceps curls will give you stronger biceps, but will they make you stronger overall or help you reach your target weight? No, not really. This brings me to my topic for this entry: functional fitness.

Functional fitness is an umbrella term for exercises meant to improve your overall fitness and athletic ability. It refers to exercises that mimic everyday movements. Think about those biceps curls for a moment. How often do you perform that movement in everyday life? I don’t know about you, but personally I’m seldom called upon to hold a weight in my hands and curl it upward. I’m a lot more likely to have to move a box from one room to another, or be crawling on the floor trying to plug a computer cord into a power bar. This is where functional fitness comes in: by training all those different parts of your body to work as a unit, you become better at everything.

And it’s not about building the most muscle possible. Jon Hotten is a British journalist who followed professional bodybuilders around for a year while writing “Muscle: A Writer's Trip Through a Sport With No Boundaries". In one passage he describes seeing Ronnie Coleman move around. Coleman was one of the most successful professional bodybuilders in history, winning the prestigious Mr. Olympia eight times (and beating Arnold Schwarzenegger’s record of seven wins in the process). If anyone should be the picture of strength and fitness, surely it should be Ronnie Coleman. Turns out, he wasn’t. This quote describes Coleman on the competition stage, where you would think he'd be at his physical peak:

"Ronnie was back in line after a couple of call-outs. Big Ron stood semi-tense, breathing heavily. He kept towelling sweat from his shaven head with a white cloth. He drank water from a large bottle. He looked up at the ceiling several times. He appeared tired and unfit. His stomach was pretty big. Dorian (Dorian Yates, another bodybuilding legend) had told me that it was permanently uncomfortable hauling all of that bulk about. The heart was working hard. So was the metabolism and the digestive system. It was all high maintenance in there. Dorian had taken Ronnie to a restaurant...He said that Ronnie had struggled with the walk there."

How is it that someone of Coleman’s obvious physical development had trouble just standing on stage, or walking to a restaurant? There’s no doubt bodybuilders are strong; Hotten wrote how Yates would lift a total of 92,430 lbs over the course of one leg workout. But none of that strength is truly functional. Sure, building muscle is part of functional fitness, but it’s not the only part. A person who runs 100-mile ultramarathons might be in spectacular cardiovascular shape, but probably couldn’t bench press 100 lbs. The key is to treat your body and your health more like an orchestra and less like a solo performer. If every member of the orchestra is at their best, the group will make beautiful music. But no matter how good a solo trumpeter might be, he’ll never compare to the sound of strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion all coming together as one.

There’s another benefit to functional fitness training as well: when you get your entire body involved in exercise through cardio, weights, flexibility and core work, you stoke your metabolism. This means your body’s furnace burns hotter. So not only does your ability to clean the garage, do the yardwork, and chase your kids around get better, you also burn more calories 24 hours a day.

If I’ve convinced you of the importance of functional fitness, you might be wondering how to achieve it. The answer can be summed up in one word: variety. You need to do many different things so that your body is constantly challenged in different ways. I recently started a functional program that I really like. Here’s my schedule:

Monday: Speed and Agility training
Tuesday: Core training
Wednesday: Upper Body weight training
Thursday: Plyometrics (jump training)
Friday: Yoga
Saturday: Total Body strength workout
Sunday: Rest

Every day, I’m doing something different. I start with speed training, then mid-section, then upper body, then lower body, then yoga, and then finish with a full-body strength workout. I’m not isolating bodyparts or ignoring entire areas of my fitness. By including a bit of everything, I’m ensuring full, balanced development of my body and mind as parts of a unified whole. No, I’ll never look like Ronnie Coleman. But that’s ok. He might have bigger muscles, but I know I have a better, stronger, healthier body. You can too.

Dairy: Going Beyond the Marketing

2011-05-25T14:26:00.000-07:00

Got milk?

That simple, two-word advertising slogan is instantly recognizable. For years, it was hard to open a magazine without seeing a celebrity or athlete sporting a milk moustache, with “Got Milk?” as the caption. The text of the ad usually mentioned all the benefits a person can get from drinking milk. The ads continue today. I just saw one with several cast members from the TV show “Modern Family”. All had the moustaches, and the text spoke of how good parents are sure to give their children plenty of milk.

So: who do you think pays for those ads? The government? The American Medical Association? Maybe a health and nutrition lobby group?

Nope. All those “Got Milk?” ads are brought to you by people who sell milk. Fact is, those ads are no different than car adverts. We are told a product is worth buying by the people who are selling it. The problem is that, unlike cars or computers or golf clubs, the dairy industry really has no competition. The claims they make are treated like gospel truth by generations of customers. Of course milk is good for you. It has calcium. It helps build strong bones and teeth. Of course you should drink it. How many times have you heard those very claims, and just accepted them as obvious truths?

If Ford told you they had the only car on the road that could protect your family, would you assume that is true and run out to buy one? Probably not. You’d evaluate their claim, compare their product to competitors’, and make an informed decision. With dairy products, we’ve been trained through generations of loyal purchases not to question any health claim related to milk, cheese, or yogurt. And we’re not talking about some consumer product you’ll eventually throw away or outgrow; this is a substance we are putting in our bodies and our children’s bodies every day, sometimes several times a day. Why do we not question whether or not dairy is all it’s cracked up to be?

The answer is simple: fantastic marketing coupled with government support. This private/public partnership is a one-two punch that keeps customers in line. More than that, if someone even tries to question claims made by the dairy industry, customers automatically view those people as heretics who don’t love their children. Customer loyalty to the dairy industry is unrivalled. To keep it that way, the industry can’t afford to have anyone asking serious questions. If someone does, they have to be dismissed as uninformed and misguided.

The thing is, those questions need to be asked. Are dairy products good for you? Do we even need them in the first place? Can we get the nutrients found in milk, etc. from other, better sources? Can dairy actually be harmful?

I’m not here to do your thinking for you, but based on everything I’ve read on the subject, the answers to the above questions are: No, dairy products are not good for you. No, we don’t need them. Yes, we can get all of milk’s nutrients in healthier, more usable forms elsewhere. And yes, dairy can be very harmful to some people. Here’s why I say you do not need milk and its by-products in your diet:

Fat, Sugar and Sodium

Whole milk (or “homo milk” here in Canada) is packed with saturated fat. A one-cup serving has 5.4g of saturated fat. Remember that saturated fat is the one that will clog your arteries and cause heart disease. That cup also has 157 calories and 12g of sugar (Did you know milk is high in sugar? The ads forgot to mention that, I guess.). Switch to 2% and you still get 3.1g of saturated fat. Skim milk has almost no fat, but still maintains more than three teaspoons of sugar per cup. And no, that’s not chocolate milk. That’s the regular stuff.

Another popular dairy product, especially in the rush to embrace all things low-carb, is cottage cheese. Here are the numbers on that, per one-cup serving: 2% cottage cheese has 220 calories per cup, with 12g of sugar and 3g of saturated fat. It also boasts 920mg of sodium. That’s more than a third of your daily sodium in one little cup of cottage cheese. One percent cottage cheese has nearly the same numbers, but actually has more sugar: 200 calories, 14g of sugar, 2g of saturated fat, and 860mg sodium.

Saturated fat intake has been linked to heart attacks, strokes, obesity, diabetes, and a host of other fatal and entirely preventable ailments. Sugar increases your risks as well. High sodium can increase your blood pressure, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes. With dairy, you get to combine all three into one powerful assault on your health.

Calcium, Vitamin D, Protein

Ok, so maybe dairy has some bad stuff in it, but it has to be offset by all the good stuff, right? While there are some beneficial nutrients in dairy, the cost to get them is just too high. And, as far as calcium goes, we’ve fallen victim to more slick marketing.

Calcium

Bones are made partly from calcium. Dairy products have calcium. Consuming dairy is good for your bones. Makes sense.

Unfortunately, science doesn’t back up this oft-repeated claim made by the people who sell dairy.

North Americans consume more dairy products than just about anyone on earth. It would stand to reason, then, if the above claims are true, that we’d also have some of the lowest rates of bone fractures in the world. We don’t. The incidence of hip fracture in American women, per 100,000 population, is currently 101.6. For men, it’s 50.5 in 100,000. For women and men in Singapore, however, where almost no dairy is consumed, the numbers are 15.3 and 26.5, respectively. Consuming more dairy correlates to more than six times the risk of hip fracture for American women, and to nearly double the risk for American men.

The Harvard Nurses Study, which monitored the health of some 78,000 women, yielded similar results: those who drank the most milk were at greater risk of bone fracture than those who drank little or no milk. Yet we continue to accept the dairy industry’s claim that if only we bought more of their product, we’d be fine.

Vitamin D

Recently, vitamin D has come in for all sorts of praise. It improves bone and dental health, boosts immunity, can protect against some types of cancer…it really has the appearance of a wonder vitamin. We should remember, though, that a lot of these fantastic claims are not very well substantiated (yet, at least). While there is certainly nothing wrong with Vitamin D, we just don’t know yet if it’s the magic bullet it’s being made out to be.

Still, though, if you want to increase your intake of Vitamin D, you don’t even need to go to the kitchen. Just head outside on a sunny day for about ten minutes, and your body will actually convert sunlight into an abundance of Vitamin D! During the winter months, supplementing with 1,000 to 2,000 IU of D3 will give you enough to reap whatever benefits the vitamin really brings. All without touching dairy.

Protein

Yes, dairy has protein. This is so that the baby cows meant to consume it will grow big and strong. But do humans need to use it as a protein source? Protein is so ubiquitous in nearly all foods that you’d have to go out of your way to avoid it. You could follow an entirely plant-based diet and get more than enough protein from beans, nuts, grains and vegetables.

Another note on dairy protein: like all animal products, dairy is acid-forming in the body. This throws off your body’s pH balance. An acidic body pH is a very dangerous thing for your health, so your body works hard to restore an alkaline (non-acidic) state. How does it do this? By taking calcium out of your bones and putting it in your bloodstream! Yes, the more animal protein you consume, the less calcium left in your bones. Guess they forgot to mention that in the ads, too.

The Animal Cost

There is a whole other aspect to dairy consumption that will resonate with some people, while just making others roll their eyes. I understand that, but I still think this is useful information so I’m including it here.

The life of a dairy cow isn’t very pleasant. Like humans, cows only lactate (produce milk) after giving birth. To run a profitable dairy operation, this means that dairy cows are kept pregnant most of the year. They give birth, the milk is taken, and when milk production naturally drops off, they are inseminated again to start the process over. This goes on until the cow’s body cannot bear the stress any longer. At that point (usually after 3 to 4 years), the cow is sent to slaughter.

You may be wondering what happens to all those calves that the dairy cow gives birth to. The females become dairy cows themselves, while the males are sold to veal producers.

The short answer is that no one wins in the dairy equation, except for the producers.

Finally, a large portion of the world’s population simply can’t digest dairy products. When we’re born, our bodies produce an enzyme called lactase. This enzyme breaks down the sugar found in milk. As we leave infancy (and stop nursing), many people stop producing it. Without it, dairy can cause bloating, nausea, gas, diarrhea, and other discomfort. Approximately 75% of African Americans do not produce lactase, nor do approximately 90% of Asians. This results in the “lactose intolerance” we hear about so frequently.

Ok, if we are to give up dairy, what do we replace it with? There are many superior sources of usable calcium and protein readily available to us. Leafy green vegetables, like spinach, kale and chard are packed with calcium. Black beans, kidney beans and chickpeas are great sources of both calcium and protein. Just 100g of white beans will give you 23g of protein, 15g of fibre, and 24% of your daily calcium requirement. I honestly don’t know why you’d want to put dairy products in your body when it is so completely unnecessary. If you need something you can swap out your milk and cheese for, I’d suggest almond milk, rice milk, or coconut milk, and trying Daiya non-dairy cheese. All lower in calories and fat than their dairy counterparts. Yes, I know coconut milk has saturated fat, but it’s a different kind of saturated fat. The benefits of coconuts will be a whole other blog entry…

And this isn’t just me talking. Many, many studies have shown that milk does not improve bone health. That saturated fat, sugar and sodium can be detrimental to our health is really not even in dispute any longer. Many establishments, like Starbucks, offer non-dairy milk alternatives. Even Beachbody, the company that created P90X, TurboJam and Insanity is now recommending avoiding dairy in its latest product, Insanity Asylum. The program’s food plan clearly states that Shaun Thompson, the creator of Insanity and Asylum, does not consume dairy. Alternatives are recommended, and it’s strongly suggested that users of the program completely eliminate dairy from their diet for 14 days. The next generation of P90X, due out later this year, will include vegan options in its meal plan.

I know we’ve all been told throughout our entire lives that dairy products are good, wholesome, and nutritious. Like I said, I’m not here to do your thinking for you. Please look into this on your own. Do some reading. Ask some questions. Learn for yourself. Don’t blindly accept what people who want your money are telling you. Then, make an informed choice that is right for you and your family.

I hope to hear some feedback on this issue. Let me know what you think!

Comebacks

2011-04-08T13:38:00.001-07:00

I started www.fitnessinthebalance.com in July 2009. My original vision for the site was to create a place where people could come to learn about health and fitness, and hopefully get inspired to make positive choices in their lives. Along the way, I became affiliated with various companies whose products were worth a look. In 2010, the site went through a major redesign as I changed internet hosting companies. I added personal fitness coaching and nutrition planning. Along the way, I continued to write new blog entries. I'm proud to say that the site has garnered nearly 10,000 hits since it first appeared.

Unfortunately, as time went by, real life began taking up more and more of my time. Not that anything bad was happening. It was just the ordinary responsibilities of being a husband, father and full-time employee that slowly ate into the time I had previously devoted to the site. I recently realized that it's been months since I added any new material. The last blog entry was in October 2010, over five months ago. It's time for that to change.

If you'd come to rely on this site and this blog for information and inspiration, I apologize for not keeping it up. I know how important positive reinforcement can be when you are trying to establish new habits in your life, and you should know that I take whatever small role I may play in maintaining your motivation very seriously.

This entry was borne of my decision to re-commit to Fitness In The Balance. It's entitled "Comebacks", and the message behind it can apply to anything in your life that you may have let slide: your health, relationships, education, diet...The thing to remember, that I hope you take from this entry, is that it is never too late for a comeback.

Did you start an exercise program, maybe as a New Year's resolution, but have fallen off the wagon? Maybe you made a decision to eat less junk food, or even to try vegetarianism, but since then have had trouble sticking to it? Or maybe you have tried to improve other areas of your life, but have seen your motivation lag? If any of that applies to you, I want you to know a few things:

1. That happens to EVERYONE. Yes, it does. You are not alone. There's a reason why 95% of obese people who lose a significant amount of weight put it all back on within three years. There's a reason why so many people have tried and failed to quit smoking. The fact is, it can be hard to stick with a decision to change your life permanently. The past may not have been great, but it was comfortable. You knew what you were getting, even if you didn't really like it. Breaking out of that routine is hard. It takes positive action each and every day. That can be tough to maintain. Know that you aren't the only one having trouble staying on track to accomplish your goals.

2. It will never be easier to re-commit to your goals than it is right now. Whatever those goals are, re-committing to them as soon as possible is key. As time passes, it will only get harder. That comfortable past becomes too cozy to escape. If you truly want to make a positive change in your life, do it today. It will only be harder tomorrow.

3. Success is possible. Period. It doesn't get any simpler than that. No matter how tough it is to keep up your effort, no matter what you have to do to keep going, know that it is worth it. Success will come to those who persevere. In fact, scratch that first sentence. Success isn't just possible. If you keep up your work, success is inevitable. I'll say that again. Success is inevitable. You WILL accomplish your goals. All you need to do is keep taking the steps, every single day, that bring you closer to them.

Support from those around you is crucial. That is why I've re-dedicated myself to maintaining and updating this website on a regular basis. You support me by visiting the site, and I support you with information and motivation. We can help each other take those daily positive actions that slowly create permanent change.

On that note, I really encourage you to get involved in the site. Send me your comments and suggestions. Tell others about the site. I think one of the reasons I let other parts of my life crowd the site out is I never really got the idea that very many people were reading what I was writing. Are you out there? If so, make yourself heard!

In the coming weeks, I'll be updating other areas of the site, particularly the nutrition and supplements sections. I look forward to picking up where I left off last year, bringing you information and inspiration to motivate you towards balanced health and fitness. It's never too late for a comeback. Time to get started.

The Evolution of My Nutrition

2010-10-31T05:26:00.000-07:00

I was reading through some old blog entries, and I found the post “Open Mind”. In it, I spoke about making healthier food choices. It’s a good read, if I do say so myself, and I recommend it if you haven’t yet read it. It also got me thinking about developments in my own life since I wrote it.

Then, I wrote, “I can say at the outset that I have no intention of becoming a vegan, or even a vegetarian for that matter.” I’ve changed since then. Now, while I’m not a full-on vegan, animal products probably make up less than 10% of my diet. I’ve cut out dairy almost completely. The only animal product I still consume regularly is organic, free-range eggs and egg whites.

So, how did I get from having no intention to become a vegetarian to where I am now? It all started with an experience I had this past summer.

One evening, after night had fallen, I was in our backyard. It was a warm night, but not so warm that it was uncomfortable. A breeze was blowing, and rustling the leaves in the tall trees that border our property. I noticed the quiet of the scene, and sat down on the patio. I leaned back and looked skyward. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, stars slowly appeared in the black sky. I felt the wind roll over me like waves on a beach, and closed my eyes. It’s hard to explain it, but I felt a sense of connection to the universe that I’d never experienced before. I felt small against the endless expanse of sky, but also like a valuable part of the system of existence. I realized that the wind I was feeling probably came from thousands of miles away, and that it had been felt by an unknown number of other people, maybe while they were in their backyards, looking at the night sky. I came away from that experience with a sense of happiness that I was part of something so beautiful, and a sense of responsibility to do my part to keep the system functioning.

From that point, I started thinking seriously about vegetarianism. I can’t say my diet changed dramatically overnight, but changes did start happening. The meals I ate became more and more plant-based. As a family, we tried new vegetables, like kale. Our garden kept a steady stream of zucchini and tomatoes flowing onto the table. We started swapping out ground meat in our pasta sauce for beans. Small changes, but changes nonetheless.

One of the things I’d always figured, when it came to raising animals for food, is that dairy and eggs were ok since the animals would be producing that anyway, and you didn’t have to kill them to get it. To educate myself, I went to the internet.

I landed at PETA’s website. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is a well-known, and somewhat infamous group. There’s no question they have a strong agenda they are pushing, and I’ve discovered that in pursuit of their cause they sometimes paint misleading pictures of situations. Still, I looked around the site and watched some of their videos. What I saw was absolutely disgusting. I knew from “Food Inc.” that livestock slaughter was gruesome, but what I didn’t know is that the director of that film actually played down the gruesomeness, or at least the explicit footage of it. As I remarked to someone after viewing the videos, there are some things you just can’t unsee.

What I was surprised to learn is just how mistreated egg-laying hens and dairy cows are. Hens are stuffed, 5 to 11 at a time, into small wire cages. If their egg production tails off, they are given electric shocks to speed it back up. They never see the outside, and because of their living conditions need to be medicated with antibiotics. They also have their beaks cut off (without anaesthetic) to prevent them from pecking at each other. Once the hens are no longer profitable, they are sent to slaughter. As they are emaciated and atrophied, their meat is deemed suitable only for things like chicken soup and chicken burgers.

Dairy cows don’t have it much better. Cows produce milk for the same reason all mammals do: to feed their young. Humans are the only species on earth that cultivate another species’ milk. In order to get a dairy cow to lactate (produce milk), they must be impregnated. This is done continually, meaning that dairy cows spend their lives either pregnant or having just recently given birth. After the lacation from the last birth tails off, they are impregnated again and the cycle resumes. Along the way, dairy cows often contract mastitis, a painful infection. They are also subject to lameness and other diseases. Like chickens, this means medication with antibiotics. Typically, a cow’s production (i.e. profitability) wanes after about three years. At that point, they are sent to slaughter.

The calves born to dairy cows face one of two paths: females become dairy cows themselves, while males are sold to the veal industry. They are kept chained in pens so small that they can barely lie down (and can’t turn around). Their muscles are purposely atrophied so that the meat will be more tender. They are slaughtered just a few months after birth. I didn’t realize this is where veal comes from (I mean, I knew what veal was, I just didn’t know its connection to the dairy industry). As they say in the PETA video “Meet Your Meat”, if you drink milk, you’re supporting the veal industry.

It had been suggested to me that PETA videos might be fabrications, along the lines of a Michael Moore “documentary”, but I don’t think they are. For one thing, the subject matter would be very hard to fake. For another, if they had fabricated these videos, accusations against them would be in the media. They aren’t. I imagine that only the worst of the worst clips make it into their videos, but that doesn’t take away from their impact.

All of this has led me to where I am today: my diet is 80 – 90% vegan. As I said earlier, the only animal products I still consume are organic, free-range eggs and egg whites. I see a distinction with those products because of the way the hens are treated. They are fed a healthy diet, spend their time inside and outside, and are generally treated far, far more humanely than their battery-cage counterparts. I also still use whey protein, but that is only because I have a container I’d already purchased some time ago. When it’s gone, I won’t be replacing it. I also still eat meat from time to time at dinner, as my family still does, though we’re all cutting that back. Additionally, my wife has a medical condition that makes consuming large amounts of soy a bad idea, so our protein choices are a touch more limited than they would be otherwise.

I’m happy (and even a bit surprised) to report that my new diet hasn’t impacted my workouts. I have at least as much energy as I did when I ate meat regularly. I have gained about three pounds, but I would chalk that up to a recent recovery week and a weekend trip to New York City. I have to say that eating this way has left me feeling energetic, lighter, and happy.

What should you take from this? I hope you’ll read these words and think some more about what you eat and where it comes from. I don’t expect anyone to become a vegan overnight. But I hope you’ll become more mindful of what you do at mealtime. All living things in the universe are connected in one way or another, and you don’t have to be a New Age hippie to believe that. Even the Bible says that God gave Man “dominion” over nature. That doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want with the planet and its inhabitants. It means we need to be responsible, and treat all living things with respect.

Control

2010-08-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

The main focus of Fitness In The Balance, beyond the technical information about diet and exercise, is to motivate people to take charge of their lives. To make healthy choices that will benefit them today and tomorrow, and for years to come. Essentially, to take control of their lives.

But are we ever really in control?

Or is all of our effort in fact aimed at simply maximizing the chances of a positive outcome, while acknowledging that we really don't control anything?

Here's what I mean: we can exercise, eat well, and adopt healthy habits. In turn, these choices will improve our bodies and minds, make us more resistant to disease and injury, and help us lead healthier and longer lives. None of which will make any difference should we find ourselves in the path of a runaway truck. Or on an airplane about to crash. Or facing a cancer diagnosis brought on by environmental toxins we couldn't do anything about. Do the choices we make actually put us in control of how long and well we'll live, or do they just put us on the soundest footing possible? If it's the latter, should we even bother?

This was brought home to me in stark detail last week. I was on vacation from work and at the grocery store one day. I was looking at tins of sardines. Sardines are a good source of protein, calcium and good fat, so they're usually a worthwhile addition to your diet. After going back and forth among the different varieties (water or oil packed, with mustard or with tomato sauce) I bought two tins of water-packed as they were the healthiest choice. I had them for lunch that day. I then came down with debilitating food poisoning that night. For the rest of the week I was either in bed or on the couch, barely eating toast and yogurt. I'm fairly sure the sardines were the culprits as my wife had a small bite and felt sick for about a day as well.

As I laid in bed, I thought how it was ironic that a choice I'd made, ostensibly to improve my health, had put me in this position. I realized that I needed to look at the reasons why I do what I do. Why do I get up at 6:15 seven days a week to exercise? Why do I consider every piece of food I put in my body before choosing to eat it? Why do I do any of this when I can end up sick regardless?

I began to understand that the "control" I thought I had over my body was an illusion. My choices affect my health, no question. But they don't ultimately determine it completely. To put it another way, I realized I can't control the outcome; I can only try to load the dice. My fitness regimen puts me in the best possible position to weather future storms, but it doesn't mean those storms won't come. I still get sick once or twice a year, but where that used to mean a week of sneezing and coughing, it now means about 24 hours with a scratchy throat. Who knows how sick I would have been from the sardines if my immune system wasn't as strong as it is?

If you're thinking about starting down the path to fitness, this is an important point to understand. You might think that it isn't worth the effort to get in better shape. You might think that you're too far gone already. But the fact is, if you improve your health today, you strengthen your entire being for tomorrow. No, getting in shape won't mean you'll never have health issues. Accidents happen, people get sick, there's contaminated food out there. But having a fit body and mind is like wearing a suit of armor. When the attacks come, you'll fend them off easily instead of losing the battle entirely. Or, maybe you won't fend them off. Maybe your armor will extend the fight, and give you years of life you wouldn't have otherwise had. Still sounds worth it to me.

It's kind of surprising that something like food poisoning ended up providing a valuable lesson. It made me re-think my own personal "why". And far from making me think the whole thing isn't worth it since the outcome isn't in my control, it's made me want to double my efforts to build the strongest possible body and mind I can.

So, like I asked at the beginning: if all this work only puts us on the soundest possible footing, but doesn't guarantee success, should we even bother? Absolutely, positively, without a shadow of a doubt, YES.

Contact me at scott@fitnessinthebalance.com.

Procrastination

2010-07-28T06:40:00.000-07:00

It's an old joke: What's the most popular day for people to start their new diet?

Tomorrow.

Procrastination is something we all deal with. We put off doing things we need to do when we really don't want to do them. They hang over our head, constantly nagging us. Sometimes we manage to forget about them, only to have them barge into our thoughts uninvited. It's only when we no longer have a choice that we give in and do something about them. It can be a dreaded job at work, a conversation you don't want to have, or yes, a diet. What do all the things we procrastinate about have in common?

The common thread is that in every case, the perceived cost of performing the task is greater than the perceived cost of not performing it. That is, not doing it is better and easier than doing it. This weighing moves us away from action and towards inaction. That balance doesn't stay the same, however; as time goes by it shifts. Eventually, the cost of not performing the task outweighs the cost of performing it. For example, you put off completing that report at work because it will be long and complicated, and anyway it's not due for another two weeks. As time passes, the consequence of not doing it (i.e. jeopardizing your job) starts to outweigh the pain of tackling it. Soon, with the deadline looming, you have no choice but to stop putting it off.

Now look at that in terms of nutrition and exercise. Is starting a fitness plan something that you absolutely must do today? Probably not. If you're like most people, your health is "good enough" that you can get by every day with no major problems. Plus, exercise is hard. Fitness is a time commitment. Combining a lack of urgency with the work of starting and sticking to a fitness plan leads to procrastination. This is why "tomorrow" is such a popular day.

But here's the problem with that approach. Just like that report at work, eventually the balance will start to shift. Your weight will increase with each passing year. Your flexibility will decrease. Your body will naturally lose muscle as you age. A poor diet will ultimately lead to disease. At some point, the cost of not taking care of yourself will far outweigh the cost of doing it. How many times have you heard of lifelong smokers who gave up the habit the day AFTER they were diagnosed with lung cancer? Or the number of people who took up healthy eating and exercise right AFTER a heart attack?

For them, the balance had shifted. The question is, why wait until then?

If you start exercising today, you'll get healthier today. If you choose to eat nutritious foods today, you'll get healthier today. And you will start reaping the benefits of those choices immediately.

We're all getting older. We'll all face health problems of some kind over the course of our lives. But wouldn't you rather take action now to give yourself the biggest advantage possible later? If it helps, think of healthy choices made today as an investment in the future you. If you put off investing for retirement, you won't have enough money to live on when you need it. If you put off investing in your own health, a strong body and mind won't be there when you need them, either.

Don't put off getting healthy any longer. Don't wait until next year, or after the summer, or next week. Don't wait until tomorrow. Do it now, when it's not yet a "necessity". Because it is.

If you need help getting started, please contact me at info@fitnessinthebalance.com

Windsor Sports and The Drive

2010-07-12T09:47:00.000-07:00

My goal with www.fitnessinthebalance.com and with this blog is to bring a message of health and fitness to as many people as possible. To that end, I have recently partnered with both Windsor Sports magazine and The Drive magazine. You can now find me in both publications, motivating, informing and inspiring readers to make positive choices in their lives. If you see one of the columns, please send me a message and let me know you're out there! I'm also always on the lookout for new blog/column ideas, so if you have something you'd like me to look into, let me know that as well.

Scott

You're Worth It

2010-06-15T09:42:00.002-07:00

Maybe you're out of shape, maybe you're overweight. Why should you start down the long road to positive change? Easy. Because you're worth it.

I've become known as a bit of an exercise freak over the last few months. I've worked out for years, but when I started P90X in February, it was like I hit a whole new gear with my activity and diet. Now, I try not to let myself give in to the temptations that are always present..."hey, come on, it's (insert special occasion here), indulge yourself!"

I also stay committed to my workout schedule. Diet and exercise have brought about some very positive mental and physical changes in my life, and the whole point of this site is to show others that they can achieve anything they want. All it takes is commitment and work.

I realize that's easy to say, but "commitment" and "work" can be hard to stick with. Like the old saying goes, if a good body came in a bottle, everyone would have one. Unfortunately, there are no real shortcuts. Sure, there are risky supplements and medical procedures, but there's no reason for anyone to resort to them. It comes down to putting in the time. How do you do it? How do you stay motivated? I've found one reason that forms the foundation for every other reason to stay healthy:

You are worth the effort.

No, it isn't easy. But you're worth it. No, it isn't always convenient. But you're worth it. You are worth it to your family, to your friends, and most of all, you're worth it to yourself. Being healthy means you look better, feel better, and function better each and every day. Being unhealthy means trudging along, head down, barely noticing the world around you, just trying to get to the end of the day. Which would you rather have? We'd all rather be healthy and full of vitality. Don't we deserve that? Of course we do. Of course you do.

When the waiter asks if you want to see the dessert menu, think to yourself "I deserve health. I'm worth it." When you look at your busy schedule and think there's no way you can find time to exercise, think to yourself "I deserve to feel good. I'm worth it."

I don't particularly enjoy getting up around 6am every day to work out, but I do it. Why? Because I deserve to be healthy. Because I'm worth it.

So are you.

You Get What You Give

2010-06-15T09:42:00.001-07:00

I just had dinner at Boston Pizza. A person at the next table gave me the inspiration to write this blog post.

I'm working out of town right now, and I just got back from dinner. I'm in a city known primarily for its oil refineries and chemical plants, so the restaurant selection wasn't that great. I eventually chose Boston Pizza because I knew I could get something both tasty and healthy there. I had a small vegetarian pizza (multigrain crust, extra sauce, light cheese), and took advantage of the warm evening by sitting on the patio. Since I was by myself, I split my dinner between reading a book I'd brought and listening to their conversation. (Oh, come on. You would have eavesdropped too.)

Towards the end of my meal, believe it or not, their conversation turned to P90X. One of them, a guy who looked to be in his 20s, said he and some friends had tried it. "We did about three workouts over a couple of weeks," he said. "It's friggin' hard. You can't commit 100% to it. You just can't."

Ok, P90X is a hard program. If he'd given it his best and come up short, no big deal. There are lots of other ways to improve fitness to the point where P90X is a realistic challenge, and there's no shame in not being able to finish it the first time you try. The thing is, everything else I saw and heard told me he didn't give it his best. Everything I saw and heard suggested fitness was the last thing on his mind.

First off, everyone at the table was smoking and drinking beer, including this person. He was talking about bars and restaurants he likes, and told of his favourite place for chicken wings. He was especially proud to have recently posted a personal best of 34 chicken wings in one sitting.

"You can't commit to it 100%. You just can't."

With all due respect, how would he know?

This kind of thing bothers me for two reasons. First, experiences like his can turn people off a program like P90X before they even try it. A person who wants to get in better shape, but isn't sure what to do, will eliminate P90X from consideration if they hear that it's effectively impossible to do. They won't consider the source of that opinion, or that he's the last person they should be taking fitness advice from. They'll just pass on it, and maybe miss the perfect opportunity to improve their lives.

Second, someone who smokes, drinks, and stuffs themselves with deep-fried crap is quite simply shortening his life. Period. He is increasing his risk of heart disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, and cancer. He's stressing his liver as it tries desperately to process all the toxins he's taking in. He's actively creating a life of illness, lethargy, and pain. I don't expect everyone I meet to have a bulletproof commitment to fitness every day of their lives, but when I see someone actively hurting themselves through laziness, it bothers me. To then have the gall to say that P90X is something that is impossible to commit to is laughable.

The title of this post is "You Get What You Give". I mean that if you aren't willing to give yourself the chance to be healthy, you can't expect to get anything out of a flirtation with exercise. Driving to the restaurant tonight, I passed a billboard with the following message on it: "Success is the combined effect of small efforts made every day". That is so very true. Success won't come if you spend most of your time sabotaging yourself. I know it sounds daunting, but you need to commit to your health to succeed. Every day, small efforts made to get active, to eat healthy, unprocessed foods, will add up to ultimate success. It might not be easy, but it's simple. You get what you give.

Winners Cheat

2010-06-15T09:41:00.002-07:00

We can say what we want about following the rules, about how doing the right thing is the key to success. None of that can take away from one undeniable fact: winners cheat.

No, I'm not talking about performance-enhancing drugs or equipment that violates the rules of a particular sport. I'm talking about the concept of the "cheat meal" and the role it plays in your longterm fitness success.

My diet is clean 90 - 95% of the time. Lean proteins, good carbs and fats, and effective supplementation are the keys to my nutrition. Nearly every time I eat or drink, I follow the plan I have set out for myself. The other 5 - 10% of the time, however, I eat and drink whatever I want. Fat, sugar, salt...if I want it, I eat it. And I DON'T beat myself up about it later. I think that one meal a week, where you "cheat" on your usual nutrition plan, can have many benefits. Here's a few of them:

1. Psychological -- I think there are a couple of ways cheat meals can give you a mental boost. The first is by letting you ease off food measuring and calorie counting, and just eating what you like. This mental break from being your own food police can be a welcome change. Like taking a break at work, it can help re-charge your batteries and let you re-commit to healthy eating stronger than before.

The second way is very different, and becomes more pronounced the longer you eat a clean diet most of the time. If you are eating good, wholesome, unprocessed food the other 90% of the time, a big fatty meal of say, KFC will certainly taste good going down, but will almost certainly leave you feeling like you've been hit by a truck immediately afterward. In this way, the cheat meal provides very strong reinforcment for healthy eating; unhealthy food makes you feel bloated, sick and sluggish. Don't want to feel that way? Don't eat that food. For me, this is the biggest benefit to a cheat meal. Feeling downright gross afterward is a strong reminder that food like that is not good for me. Days later, when I feel the temptation to indulge (yes, that temptation returns soon enough), I remember back to that sick feeling I had the last time I gave in. I don't want to feel that way, so I'm less likely to surrender to whatever is tempting me.

2. Physical -- While eating a cheat meal may not make you want to lace up your cross-trainers and get in a workout, it can give you some physical benefits. If you eat the exact same thing, day in and day out, your body gets used to it. You metabolize your food the same way every day because it's the same food every day. Shock it with a high-calorie meal full of things you don't normally ask it to deal with, like fat and salt, and you essentially startle it into a higher gear. Your body has to work harder to digest and process a cheat meal, and as a result your metabolism gets a boost. It's the same concept as switching up your workouts: give your body something new to do and it will have no choice but to work harder and improve.

It may also be that your regular diet needs adjusting but you don't know it. You could be a bit low in carbs, say, and as a result not performing as well as you could be in your workouts. A cheat meal will likely give your body a big boost of carbs, helping it replenish muscle glycogen stores that have run low, and can actually increase your athletic performance.

3. Social -- Unless you live in some kind of fitness colony, odds are the people around you aren't as committed to fitness as you are. Going out with friends while maintaining healthy nutrition can be difficult. Not impossible, of course -- there are always healthy options no matter where you go -- but difficult. Sure, you could order a salad with grilled chicken and drink water when you go out to celebrate your friend's birthday, or stick to the fresh vegetable tray while watching the Super Bowl, but sometimes you want to indulge just because everyone else is. There's nothing wrong with that. Planning for a night out or special occasion by saving a weekly cheat meal can be just the ticket to give you the best of both worlds: you get the benefits noted above, plus you don't have to hear the razzing about "Oh, come on, live a little!"

The key to all of this is to keep your cheat meals as the rare exception in an otherwise solid nutrition plan. One meal a week is enough to get all the benefits without setting your progress back. Some people suggest a whole cheat day, but unless you are already in excellent shape with a very high metabolism, and are working out hard 5 to 7 days a week, I tend to think an entire day of cheating is too much. You will almost certainly slow your progress, if not slide backwards. And remember, even cheat meals have their limits. Want pizza, followed by a hot fudge sundae? Knock yourself out. Want three pizzas and an entire tub of ice cream? Too much of a good thing.

So, as I said at the outset, the plain truth is that winners cheat. If you want to maximze your longterm success, maybe you should consider becoming a cheater, too.

Why Caffeine Isn't Evil

2010-06-15T09:41:00.001-07:00

I don't think there's a food substance around with more conflicting information than caffeine.

Caffeine is a substance that has been the subject of study literally thousands of times over the years. Unfortunately, much of that study has been financed by groups with strong feelings either for or against it, so the results should be viewed cautiously. If most of the studies are looked at together, though, some patterns emerge. Caffeine isn't the enemy some would have you believe.

First, what is caffeine? It's a chemical compound discovered in 1819 by a German chemist named Maxwell Haus (ok, actually his name was Friedrich Ferdinand Runge, but how cool would that have been?). It is a central nervous system stimulant. In nature, it acts as a natural pesticide by paralyzing and killing animals that eat plants that contain it. For our purposes, it's what gives coffee and tea their zing, and makes them the most popular beverages on the planet.

Green tea has less caffeine than black tea; black tea has less than coffee. Dark roast coffee actually has less caffeine than light roast (the roasting process reduces caffeine content). Espresso beans actually have less caffeine than light roast coffee, but espresso is brewed with much less water and so the higher concentration gives it more kick than it would otherwise have.

Caffeine used to be counted as a banned substance by the International Olympic Committee, but in 2004 the IOC removed it from the list. The concern was that it would function as an ergogenic, i.e. a performance enhancer. While several studies have shown that ingesting caffeine prior to athletic activities can increase performance, it would seem that the IOC correctly figured it has bigger substance problems to deal with.

The downsides of caffeine are remarkably few. Taking large amounts can lead to nervousness, irritability and insomnia. Coffee tends to be acidic, and drinking large amounts of it can lead to stomach upset. On that note, the ganoderma added to OrganoGold coffee balances the acidity and eliminates any acid reflux problems coffee drinkers can get.

The upsides are far more numerous. Drinking as little as one to three cups of coffee a day will reduce your risk of Type 2 diabetes, while several studies agree that coffee will reduce your chances of developing Parkinson's, gallstones, colon cancer, and cirrhosis of the liver.

It seems that caffeine, in tea or coffee, is actually pretty healthy. Yes, you can get it in soft drinks and those "energy drinks", but bear in mind that they are usually full of other chemicals that really have no place in the human body. Instead of sugar, artificial sweeteners, or other chemicals, getting your caffeine from coffee or tea will also give you a big payload of antioxidants, which protect your body from cell damage that can lead to cancer and other life-threatening diseases.

So, drink up. But remember, while coffee and tea are good for you, cream, sugar, whipped topping, sprinkles, and whatever else the coffee chains offer, aren't. There are enough varieties of coffee and tea out there that I'm sure you can find one you like without turning it into dessert in a cup. Now get out there and start exploring!

Walking the Walk

2010-06-15T09:40:00.000-07:00

Sure, I can talk about fitness and health, but what am I actually doing about it in my own life? Read on to find out.

I hope that people who take the time to read this blog find it useful and interesting. A huge thanks, by the way, goes out to everyone who checks in when I post on facebook or Twitter that there's a new entry. I've had some good feedback, so I'm happy to keep it going. I'm also always on the lookout for new topics, so feel free to send me questions and comments.

While I enjoy talking about fitness and health, I also know that there are a lot of people out there who follow the "do as I say, not as I do" philosophy. They might spout off about how things should be done, but in their own lives, completely ignore their own words. We can probably all think of examples where someone's public statements have collided with their personal actions and decisions. To show you that I am NOT one of those people, and that balanced fitness isn't just something I talk about, I thought it might be useful to describe my own current fitness program, both in terms of exercise and nutrition.

Exercise

I obviously make no secret of my opinion of Beachbody programs. I've done P90X twice, and I'm currently in week 6 of 12 on P90X+. The "Plus" is a new set of five workouts that emphasize the same muscle confusion principle so vividly on display in P90X, but in a very different way. Where P90X resistance workouts tackle two or three bodyparts at a time, like Chest and Back, or Chest Shoulders and Triceps, the two resistance workouts in the Plus, Upper Body Plus and Total Body Plus, hit more muscle groups at once. Where the P90X workouts are all about an hour long, the Plus workouts are generally about 40 to 45 minutes long. Another difference is that with P90X, you choose the weight you want to lift, and aim for a certain number of reps. In the Plus, you choose your weight but continue for a set period of time instead. You then immediately move on to the next exercise with no break in between. The Plus is essentially circuit training, where P90X is more like conventional weight training.

The cardio workouts are also different. Instead of Plyometrics (which I love, even though the first time I tried it I had to stop halfway because I was going to throw up), there's Interval X Plus, and instead of Kenpo X, there's Kenpo Cardio Plus. Again, the Plus workouts are shorter and more intense. There's also Abs/Core Plus, which subs in for P90X's Ab Ripper X. It's a challenging abs workout that also emphasizes overall core strengthening. Core includes everything from your chest to your knees, so it's a pretty comprehensive workout on its own, and you do it right after Upper Plus.

Both programs have "recovery" weeks. Unlike P90X, however, where the recovery week involves lots of yoga and stretching, the Plus recovery week uses the P90X resistance workouts. So instead of Upper Plus, you would do Chest and Back instead. Not much of a recovery, but it definitely changes things up for the body in a big way. Both programs also include yoga, which I'll talk about in a moment.

Overall, the Plus is an excellent group of workouts. They are very different from P90X. Given how sore I was when I started the Plus, it's clear that they work. I'm really enjoying it. Together, P90X and the Plus make for an incredibly challenging but effective fitness program.

Now, on to yoga. As I've said elsewhere on this site, I hated yoga the first time I tried it. Since then, it's become my absolute favourite workout. I really love it, and can't recommend it highly enough to everyone. No matter your physical limitations, or how unflexible you think you are, you can and will benefit from yoga if you give it a chance. In addition to Yoga X, the routine that came with P90X, I have since bought Fountain of Youth yoga, also from P90X trainer Tony Horton, as well as two Eoin Finn DVDs. Eoin is a yoga practitioner from BC, and his programs are also really good. He gets into the non-physical side of yoga more than Tony does. I've also joined a local yoga studio, and attend an early class once a week. It's been really great learning about this practice. I hope you will give it a try. My flexibility has improved, my strength has improved, and the calmness of mind that it brings is a welcome change from an otherwise crazy day. Seriously, give it a shot.

So, there you have it. I'm doing something, whether it's resistance, intervals, plyo, yoga or kickboxing, six days a week for about an hour at a time.

Nutrition

I follow the P90X nutrition guide for the most part, though I just recently added more protein to my diet to help increase lean body mass. What that means is I consume about 3,000 calories a day, broken down into about 350g of carbs, 70g of fat, and 260g of protein. I think that's about a 45/20/35 percentage ratio.

My primary food sources are lean proteins and egg whites, whole grain breads and tortillas, lots of vegetables, some fruit and dairy, and almost entirely unsaturated fats from nuts and olive oil. I also use both whey and casein protein shakes. This diet, with some tweaking along the way, has brought me to about 178lbs and, according to my bodyfat calipers, 5.6% bodyfat.

As for supplements, I also use a pre-workout drink called "24/7", which has some carbs, but also creatine and amino acids to jumpstart my system in the morning since I work out right after waking up and on an empty stomach. I follow my workout with the P90X Results and Recovery Formula, which has about 10g of protein and 40g of carbs. Carbs are essential after a hard workout to replenish your muscles, so don't be afraid of them after you exercise. I also take a multi-vitamin, as well as additional creatine, a fish oil capsule, Vitamin D and Vitamin C.

I drink a good bit of water during the day, though probably not as much as I should. Hydration is important, especially if you're taking creatine. (Without proper hydration, creatine can lead to painful leg cramps. I know this from experience.) I also drink black coffee, low-sodium V8 juice, and use 8 oz of skim milk in my casein protein shake. Lately I've been getting into different kinds of tea as well. Things like tea and coffee are actually pretty good for you so long as you don't bombard them with cream, milk, sugar, caramel, chocolate or any of the other things that can turn a simple beverage into liquid dessert.

Well, there you have it. I hope you can see that I take balanced fitness seriously enough that I walk the walk in addition to talking the talk. Know that I wouldn't recommend anything that I wouldn't do myself. Is it a lot of work? I suppose it is. It took some effort to get the diet down, and getting out of bed that early is still tough some days, but the thing is that once health becomes a habit, you really start to crave it. On days where you eat poorly or miss a workout, you feel it. I hope you'll choose to join me and make positive changes in your life as well. There's always room for more, and it's NEVER too late to start!

The Importance of Support

2010-06-15T09:39:00.000-07:00

Committing to a healthy lifestyle is about more than just changing the decisions you make. It has to be backed up with a sustainable, practical action plan that allows you to realize your goals. To maximize your chance of success, you will need help. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to find.

Any major decision you make in your life will invariably involve other people. Going to school, changing jobs, getting married, becoming a parent, all these things may happen to you, but they involve others as well. Getting fit is no different. Yes, you are the one who has to put in the work and eat the right foods, but the people in your circle will also have a role to play in helping you succeed. Frankly, they can play an absolutely pivotal role in how successful you will ultimately be. That's because fitness can be a tough road. There will be days where you don't want to exercise, or don't want to order the salad. It's at those times that the people around you can make or break your resolve to get healthy.

Unfortunately, all too often the supportive people you need just aren't there, and you run into trouble. And that says more about them than it does about you.

If you are the only person you know who is trying to lead a healthier lifestyle, that necessarily means you are breaking away from the pack. Your friends and family don't see things the way you do. They either don't want to get healthy, or they just can't be bothered. In either case, they can frequently become human roadblocks on your path to success. At best, they just keep quiet. You do your thing, they do theirs, and you tacitly agree not to talk about it. At worst, they become active saboteurs. They "support" you when you say you don't feel like working out; they "encourage" you when you are eyeing the dessert menu. Any of this sound familiar?

This issue came up for me recently when I found out that most of my family and friends assume that fitness is just a "phase" for me that I'll soon tire of. When I do, I'll go back to being the unhealthy person I was years ago. Apparently, the fact that I've been exercising regularly for eight years, and really applied myself to it over the last fourteen months isn't enough to convince those around me that I'm in it for the long haul. This website, flying across the continent to learn from Tony Horton, putting a dedicated workout room in the basement...none of this has earned me the respect you might assume it would. I don't mean that they don't respect my personal accomplishments, but saying that it's a phase that I'll soon outgrow trivializes everything I've done to this point. It also doesn't say much for the people I've actually helped to inspire to make their own healthy choices, either through this site, on the Beachbody message boards, or by actually designing programs for them.

So, then -- why not be supportive?

First, I agree that in the past, I have signed on to my fair share of fads. Cigar smoking, cowboy boots, a pierced ear: guilty, guilty and guilty. Given that those things were, to varying degrees, pleasurable, it might make sense to expect me to stop doing something that is physically challenging and often difficult. There's a difference, though: all of those things ran their course and were gone in a matter of months, or at most a year. Fitness has now been part of my life for nearly a decade. During that time, I've gone from 215lbs with a pot belly to 179lbs and 4.8% bodyfat. I approach my 40th birthday in better shape than at any time in my life. To suggest this is a fad diminishes accomplishments of which I am rightfully proud.

So as I said -- why?

The answer lies in something I said earlier. If you're doing this on your own, you're breaking away from the pack. You are doing something different that is improving your life. If those around you aren't doing the same thing, two emotions quickly rise to the surface: jealousy, and what the Germans call schadenfreude. Others become jealous when they see your physical condition improving while theirs isn't; they become jealous of your increased energy and ability to focus on tasks, while they still doze on the couch. Schadenfreude is the concept of taking satisfaction in the failure of others. In this context it manifests itself by acts of sabotage. Telling you that you deserve a break from your workouts so that you can go see a movie and eat a suitcase-sized bag of popcorn, or coming up with any excuse for a special occasion that will involve overeating. In essence, doing these things pulls you back to the pack, and makes those doing them feel better about their own shortcomings. If you can be brought down to their fitness level, they're no longer worse by comparison.

Statistics from the US say that if a morbidly obese person loses enough weight to achieve a healthy Body Mass Index, there is less than a 5% chance that he or she will keep the weight off permanently. Certainly there are a lot of factors at play, but a lack of support from family and friends is likely a big reason for ultimately failing to maintain one's health.

What to do about it? Remember that you can only control your behaviour, not anyone else's. You can either let them pull you back and resume a life of fatigue, illness and what-ifs, or you can use it to light a fire under you and prove everyone wrong. Personally, I'll take the second option.

If you're dealing with less-than-supportive peers, know that there's a whole world of people out there as committed as you are to getting healthy. Surround yourself with them. If you're into cycling, join a cycling club. If you're a runner, hook up with other runners. Make friends with someone at the yoga studio, or with that person at the gym who asked you for a spot. If you usually work out alone (like I do), there are countless internet message boards and websites where you'll find people waiting to give you real support and encouragement. I'm on www.teambeachbody.com regularly, and there's also many facebook pages devoted to health and fitness. And don't forget to come by www.fitnessinthebalance.com too.

Are you experiencing any negativity in your own fitness journey? I'd love to hear about it. How have you coped? Has it impacted on your results? Let me know!

The Easier Choice?

2010-06-15T09:38:00.002-07:00

There's no question that fast food is an easier option than cooking at home or packing a lunch. But if you're not careful, you can fall into some pretty awful dietary traps out there.

We're all under time constraints in our daily lives. In the morning, there's getting ourselves (and maybe children) out of bed and ready for the day. At work, there are always deadlines, meetings, customers, projects to deal with. Lunch gets wolfed down in a spare moment. Once we get home, there's making dinner, helping with homework, cleaning up, and it seems like once we're really all finished our work, it's time for bed. And that doesn't even include finding time for exercise. As a result, and completely understandably, we look for ways to save time and energy. One of those corner-cutting options is fast food, from a drive-thru or delivery. But what are we really saving? Look at some of the popular food choices, and the few minutes we save are coming at an incredible cost to our health.

Let's look at popular choices. There's always a McDonalds or Burger King around for a quick bite at lunch or to pick up dinner on the way home. You can order a combo in less time than it takes to read a newspaper headline. But what did you order?

A Big Mac combo, with medium fries and medium Coke: 1130 calories, 48 g fat (12.5 saturated, 1.5 trans), 1325 mg sodium, 151 g carbs, 29 g protein

A Whopper combo, with medium fries and medium Coke: 1250 calories, 57 g fat (14.5 saturated, 1.4 trans), 1750 sodium, 154 carbs, 31 protein

Depending on your own nutritional needs, either of the above would likely provide over half the calories you should have in an entire day. The carbs are almost all simple sugars, meaning either meal gives you the equivalent of about 30 teaspoons of sugar. That these restaurants are still selling food with trans fats in them frankly should tell you that their primary concern is with their profit statements, and not with their customers' health. I should note that the numbers above come from the restaurants' websites. The numbers may not be accurate, as they both offer info for the medium coke that is inconsistent. McDonald's medium Coke is 21 ounces and has 15mg of sodium. Burger King's medium is 22 ounces and claims 50 mg of sodium, more than triple. This makes me wonder about the accuracy of their nutritional claims, and makes me think the real picture might actually be worse.

Ok, so maybe the burger joints are out of the question. Domino's is now offering something called a "Pasta Bread Bowl", which is a serving of pasta in a big fluffy bowl made of bread. There are a few different varieties, but let's look at Chicken Alfredo, arguably the "healthiest" option. NOTE: The nutritional info on Domino's website is not helpful because they claim that a serving is half a bread bowl. This item is priced at $5.99. I would find it hard to believe that two people would buy one of these and split it. It's priced like a single serving, and would in all likelihood be consumed as a single serving. I've doubled the numbers from their site to give an accurate picture.

Domino's Chicken Alfredo Pasta Breadbowl: 1400 calories, 50 g fat (22 saturated, 1 trans), 2140 mg sodium, 186 g carbs, 52 g protein. Note that this doesn't include any beverages.

The Whopper still comes out higher in total fat, but the saturated fat is much worse, and neither burger combo can hold a candle to Domino's sodium or carb content. Sure there's 52 g of protein, but it's not nearly worth it considering the rest of the meal.

While these examples are shockingly bad, it should be mentioned that some chains are offering healthier choices. McDonald's, in fact, has a range of salads you can get with grilled chicken breast that are actually quite good. Still, no one is foolish enough to think that fast-food restaurants are paying stock dividends on the back of salads. The burgers are still the mainstays.

I realize that cooking for ourselves is more time-consuming, and can be more expensive (though it doesn't have to be; there are lots of ways to cut costs and still stay healthy, more on that in a future post). But what are you really saving? Dinner can take 30 minutes to prepare. Packing a lunch the night before might take another 10. Those 40 minutes can save you hundreds of calories, thousands of milligrams of sodium, and whole days' worth of saturated fat. Chicken or tuna on whole wheat bread. A thermos of vegetable soup. Some leftover whole grain pasta with meat sauce. A big salad with chicken breast and a bit of olive oil dressing. Any of these ideas can be put together quickly for healthy alternatives to fast food. For dinner, try some frozen fish. You can put it right in the oven, frozen, with some salad dressing drizzled over. Add some vegetables and brown rice, and you have dinner in about 30 minutes. My point is that options are out there, if we actually look around.

We all are in charge of our own lives, and our own health. A huge part of health is the fuel we put into our bodies. The better quality fuel we use, the better our bodies will function. It really is that simple. You deserve nutritious food, and so does your family. I hope you've seen that the easy way out is actually much harder than you ever thought possible.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on quick and nutritious meal ideas. If I get enough, I'll post them on the site with you getting full credit for your creativity. Let's hear from you!

Setting Yourself Up For Success

2010-06-15T09:38:00.001-07:00

Thinking that fitness is an "all or nothing" proposition is a common but ultimately destructive mindset we need to avoid.

When you make the decision to take charge of your health, you probably think about changes you can make on several fronts: exercise, nutrition, sleep, supplements, and so on. There's no question that in order to make the biggest difference in your overall health, you need to address more than one area. Having said that, thinking that you have to change every aspect of your life as of 7:00am tomorrow, and that doing anything less means failure, is a sure-fire route to disappointment.

Changes mean nothing if you don't stick with them. And chances are you won't stick with them if you suddenly throw yourself from inactivity into a fitness boot camp that would make a professional athlete exhausted. If you make incremental changes, however, and let each become a habit before introducing more, you are much more likely to keep up your good work. Before you know it, you're living a whole new lifestyle that has completely replaced your old routine. The key is taking one step at a time.

Hand in hand with that approach is the realization that fitness is NOT an "all or nothing" proposition. So many people think that if they can't commit to a complete rebuilding of their lives all at once, that they've failed. Or that if they miss one workout or eat one unhealthy food, they might as well give up. They set the bar for success so high that no one could ever achieve it. The worst part about this belief is that the feeling of failure erases all the good that was done otherwise: that piece of cake doesn't negate the week's worth of healthy eating that came before it; sleeping in one morning instead of working out doesn't mean you're back to square one on your exercise program. We need to realize that we're all human, and we'll all slip up from time to time. Frankly, I don't even know if "slip up" is the right term because that suggests a mistake was made. If you're feeling too tired to work out, that could just be your body telling you it needs a break. That piece of cake could be just what you need to remind yourself that unhealthy food leaves you feeling unhealthy.

I know it might seem strange to hear me saying it's ok to take it easy from time to time, since those who know my fitness program know that it's pretty strict. The fact is that relaxing the rules a bit can actually help restore your mindset to a place where you're ready to jump back into your program harder than ever.

For example, I completed my second 90-day round of P90X at the beginning of August. My plan was to do a month of modified P90X workouts before starting another round. A couple of weeks into the modified month, however, my head just wasn't into it. My motivation was lagging, and I was mentally exhausted. So, I rearranged my schedule. I decided to take a week off (with just some light activity, but no specific agenda of workouts), and start the next round after the break. Now, on Thursday of my rest week, I'm already feeling rejuvenated and looking forward to Monday and the start of my next round. Did I lose any of my gains in this week off? Probably. I expect my cardio fitness will have some catching up to do. But I know that it will take very little time to get back to where I was, and with a re-energized mindset I'll be able to build and improve with renewed enthusiasm.

(While breaks can be good, don't misunderstand me: when I talk about taking some time off, you first have to earn it. One week of solid workouts doesn't entitle you to a week's vacation. I had been going almost non-stop since February, and I needed a break. Time off should be the exception, not the rule.)

My ultimate point is this: balanced fitness is a lifestyle choice that touches many aspects of life. All the good intentions in the world won't amount to anything, though, if we don't stay committed. To do that, start slowly and build, and don't be afraid to hit the "pause" button from time to time. Far from signifying failure, it could really be the key to your lifelong success.

Open Mind, Full Plate

2010-06-15T09:37:00.002-07:00

Nutrition has been at the forefront of my fitness thinking lately. I've learned a lot in the last month and made some very positive changes to my nutrition as a result. There are some easy steps you can take as well to improve the quality of the food you eat.

Last month, I had the opportunity to travel to Scottsdale, Arizona and attend a Tony Horton Fitness Camp. From the 22nd to the 24th of January, I got the chance to work out with the man who created P90X, and to hear seminars on a variety of topics. Most of the seminars were given by Tony himself, but one was given by Melissa Costello. Melissa is Tony's personal chef and the owner of KarmaChow. She spoke, not surprisingly, about nutrition and its impact on health. While Melissa is a vegan, she isn't militant about it. She acknowledges that everyone makes their own personal choices, and the focus of her presentation was to give the audience information about options that are available to them.

I can say at the outset that I have no intention of becoming a vegan, or even a vegetarian for that matter. Having said that, my eyes have been opened to a great degree about the benefits of a diet that is more plant-based than animal-based (what some people call a "flexitarian" diet). In addition to Melissa's presentation, I've recently seen the movie "Food Inc." and I'm reading Michael Pollan's book, "In Defence of Eating". Each has changed the way I look at supermarkets, restaurants, and really, food in general.

The main things I've started thinking about are where, exactly, the food on my plate comes from, and how it got there. These questions touch on different areas.

I wouldn't call myself an environmentalist, but do I really need to buy tropical fruit in the middle of winter that flew thousands of kilometres to get to me? Or fish that was caught in southeast Asia? I admit that sometimes our options are limited and we have to choose from what's available, but when the opportunity to buy local (or at least from the same continent) arises, shouldn't we take advantage? When you live in a place like Canada, it's a lot easier to think this way in the summer. Still, there are choices we can make year-round that will lead us to fresher, more nutritious food that isn't grown on the other side of the planet. Locally-grown apples and tomatoes can be found just about 12 months a year. Greenhouses still grow fruits and vegetables even when it's too cold for outdoor growing...there are choices available to us if we take the time to look.

Another issue concerns animal products. After watching "Food Inc." and seeing what commercial/industrial food production really looks like, I have to admit that my feelings on eating meat changed. As I said earlier, I'm not looking to become a vegetarian, but seeing chickens that have grown so big so fast because of hormones that they can barely walk, and when they do it's in a pen filled with feces, has made me think about where the chicken on my plate comes from. Seeing cows too sick to walk being pushed towards slaughter by a forklift has made me wonder exactly what we as a society are doing. If, for some reason, this was the only possible way to raise animals for consumption, then there wouldn't be much that could be done. The thing is, it isn't. There ARE ways to raise animals that 1) treats them more humanely and 2) actually creates healthier meat. Unfortunately, those ways are not the most economically efficient. In the race to maximze profits, the animal processing companies have focused solely on the bottom line. How has this impacted on the people who buy the end products at the grocery store? Well, can you recall a time when you heard about foodborne illness in the news so frequently? I can't.

Here's one example: Cows are meant to eat grass. If you introduce corn into their diet (commercial cattle's main food source), two things happen: they get fatter faster, and the risk of infection from e.coli goes up. Higher profits at the cost of higher risk.

Feed a cow grass, however, and it will be a healthier (albeit slimmer) animal who likely won't need antibiotics. It's stomach will process the grass properly, and the end product will be beef that is healthier to eat. The problem is that feeding grass to cattle requires open space, which means fewer cows per acre of farmland, which means lower profits.

The same goes for pigs, poultry, and all other commercially-raised animals. More space and better treatment equals healthier products. I like my food to be affordable as much as the next person, but how "cheap" is it if we're paying the price in increased risk of disease?

My advice to you is this: if you can afford it, and if you can find it, think hard about switching to organic meat. I have found that, in addition to the health benefits, it actually tastes better too.

Another step I've taken personally is to become a "restaurant vegetarian". When I eat meat at home, I can control what it is and where it comes from. In a restaurant, I don't have that luxury. So, when I eat out, I now stick to vegetarian dishes. I feel better for having made this choice, and vegetarian items are usually healthier and a few bucks cheaper as well. It's an easy way to immediately improve the overall quality of your diet.

The other facet to the question of where my food comes from relates not to geography but to science. I've mentioned elsewhere on the site that at a grocery store, you're best advised to stick to the outer edges. There, you'll find produce, the baker, the butcher, dairy, items that are (generally) still in the form they took in nature. In the aisles, on the other hand, is where you'll find foods that have often been so processed and altered that they really aren't "food" anymore. Rather, they are what Michael Pollan calls "edible foodlike substances". While I won't try to summarize all of Pollan's points in his book (which I highly recommend reading), I will mention that his claims regarding food science seem hard to refute. In the grocery aisles, we now have literally thousands of items whose main ingredients include three items: corn (in the form of high fructose corn syrup, or simply "glucose-fructose" in Canada), wheat (white flour), and soy (soybean oil, soy lecithin, etc). This is because governments have historically subsidized the growing of these crops, making them cheap and plentiful for commercial food processors. The problem is, all three carry health risks: high fructose corn syrup is linked to obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes complications; white flour got that way because almost all nutritional value has been refined out of it, leaving largely empty calories behind; and soy contains phytoestrogens that can affect hormone balances in humans and potentially increase tumor growth in breast cancer patients.

Chemical preservatives, flavours, colours, and texture enhancers are all often found in packaged, processed foods. With every unpronounceable chemical ingredient, these products move farther and farther away from the foods they are supposed to represent. Pollan gave an example ingredient list in his book. It came from a loaf of Sara Lee whole grain bread. Rather than the yeast, sugar, salt, flour and water you might expect to find on the ingredient list, it boasted a total of 41 different components. All to make bread. These included a subset called "dough conditioners", whose sole purpose was to soften the bread so that it would break down in the mouth with less need for active chewing. The notion that commercial food companies are actively trying to create foods that require less effort on the part of the eater is explored by Dr. David Kessler in his book, "The End of Overeating". The addition of extra fats, for example, increases the melt-in-your-mouth quality of foods, allowing the eater to swallow them down and reach for more that much sooner.

To counter this ever-increasing trend towards foodlike substances and away from foods, staying on the edge of the grocery store is a good tactic. So is staying out of the grocery store altogether and using seasonal farmers' markets. When you do buy packaged food, and I admit that we all have to buy at least some of it, take a moment to read the ingredients. If a product contains ingredients you can't define or pronounce, do you really need it in your body? Probably not. Pollan's urging of his readers to "Eat Food" sounds absurdly simple, but the thing is, more and more of what's on grocery store shelves comes out of a laboratory, not a farm.

I hope this post has made you think about your own food choices. I'm not here to convert anyone to anything. The whole purpose of this site is to pass along useful information I find in my own wellness journey. If it inspires conversation, that's great. If it inspires you to make some different, healthier choices the next time you go food shopping, even better.

If you have any questions about anything I've said, or are looking for more information, or think I'm completely wrong about all of this, I encourage you to leave a comment and open up some discussion about this fascinating topic.

Movement

2010-06-15T09:37:00.001-07:00

It frequently happens that I am reminded of what's important when I watch and interact with my two-year old son.

Last night, as I was cleaning up the kitchen, I looked into the living room. My son was watching Thomas the Tank Engine, as usual, and the theme song came on. Instead of passively watching, he was on his feet and dancing. Arms up, twisting back and forth, eyes locked on the screen. Soon, he was twisting so much that he spun himself around. It was as though he realized that was actually fun, because the dancing gave way to spinning. After a few seconds, he stopped, and then ran top-speed into the kitchen. It got me thinking about how we all start out with this love of movement, and somewhere along the way we lose it. Why is that? When we're kids, I guess we have no real restrictions or worries; when you feel like dancing, you dance. As we get older, and Thomas gives way to mortgages and deadlines, simple things like movement get relegated to the "To Do" list, to be worked in when (or if) there's time. In a lot of cases, the joy we felt from running and jumping as kids is replaced by the "joy" we get from finishing off a tub of ice cream while sitting in front of the tv. Plus, inactivity breeds inactivity: we sometimes don't get up off the couch because of aches and pains we got from not moving in the first place. We have an obesity epidemic in the Western world because we've lost touch with the joy that comes from doing what we were built to do: move.

Today, I want you to find that child inside of you who still wants to run, to dance, to spin around. Take a few minutes out of your day and indulge him or her. Do it in your house with the shades pulled down if you want. Just move. Who knows -- it could be habit-forming.

Holiday Eating -- A Survival Guide

2010-06-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

Is there a time of year more dangerous to your waistline than that red zone between Thanksgiving and New Year's? Take heart: there ARE ways to steer clear of trouble at the holiday table.

The time span between Thanksgiving and New Year's brings with it no end of perils. Between crowds at the mall, fights for parking spots, crossing names off your shopping list, making the visting rounds and, for you parents out there, assembling toys based on instructions written by someone with no particular knowledge of the English language, it can be all too easy to give up on nutrition until January.

Not on my watch, soldier.

It's precisely when you are burning the candle at both ends that you need to pay attention to your nutrition the most. If your body is running in top gear nearly all of the time, the quality of the fuel it gets is critical. Unfortunately, this time of year usually means a near-constant buffet of cookies, cakes, cheese, chips, dips, vast trays of fresh-from-the-oven frozen hors d'ouevres, and so on. What's a person to do?

Since surrender is not an option, and neither is locking yourself in a room until January, you need to adapt. Even the worst dietary situations can have escape routes if you plan in advance and keep your longterm goals in mind. Here are some suggestions for holiday parties and shopping trips:

1. Don't arrive hungry. Before you even get in the car, have a snack. The traditional advice is a glass of water and an apple. The water and fibre will fill you up, making you less inclined to fill your plate before you've even taken your coat off. A small bowl of whole-grain cereal would do the trick as well, and that would also offer the benefit of slow-release sugars that will keep your hunger from spiking soon after.

2. Water, and lots of it. I know it's not exciting or particularly festive, but staying hydrated is maybe the best advice I can give. You already know that your body needs water to function properly, but another benefit is that it can help you feel full. Drink a couple of glasses before going to a party, and alternate water with other more interesting beverages, and you'll be well on your way to minimizing dietary damage. But don't forget...

3. Don't drink your calories. I know that Christmas parties tend to involve alcohol, and that somewhere along the way, somebody decided it was a good idea to put alcohol in sugary, egg-flavoured cream. Here's the problem: egg nog on it's own packs nearly 350 calories per cup, 19 g of fat and 21 g of sugar. Add a shot of rum and the calorie count tops 400. Remember, that's per cup. When was the last time you saw someone stop at one cup? You could easily consume 1000 calories or more without even having to chew. Yikes.

4. Think colourfully. No, I don't mean the red and green tortilla chips next to the spinach dip. There's usually a (largely ignored) vegetable tray somewhere on the table. Red and green peppers, carrots, broccoli, grape tomatoes...as far as I'm concerned, they're all nutritional freebies. Vitamins, antioxidants, and fibre to help you feel full. Fill up on them, and you'll be a lot less likely to reach for a handful of reindeer-shaped Cheezits.

5. Potluck, anyone? One great way to ensure that there will be at least one healthy dish at a party is to bring it yourself. Most hosts and hostesses won't mind if you offer to bring something. If you do, make something that can sit at room temperature without spoiling (like homemade whole-grain pita chips and tomato salsa) unless you know there will be steam trays available.

6. Pack your own provisions before you hit the mall. If it's a shopping trip instead of a party on your agenda, you need to plan ahead. Leave your diet to the people who rent space in the food court and you're asking for trouble. First, figure out how long you'll be out. Remember that you want to eat something every 2 to 3 hours to keep your metabolism humming. Fruit, a bag of nuts, protein bars, or a bag of trail mix with nuts and dried fruit can keep your energy up, your hunger down, and your pants fitting the way they should. If your trip stretches across a mealtime, look for a Subway. Their 6" Oven Roasted Chicken sub on whole grain bread is only about 300 calories, with less than 5 g of fat. It's a great choice from a restaurant with a lot of healthy options.

Finally, remember that this period only comes once a year. If you've been faithful to your workouts, and you've been eating clean, you can indulge a bit without beating yourself up. If that quadruple-chocolate pudding cake is just irresistible, go ahead and have a slice. It won't mean you're a bad person. It will, however, mean that you'll need to keep it in mind when you make other dietary and fitness choices.

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! My resolution for 2010 is to help more and more people start making healthy choices in their lives. I'm always here to help you with questions or concerns, or to give you a kick in the butt when you need some motivation, so keep in touch!

Keeping Your Cool

2010-06-15T08:04:00.000-07:00

It's June. That means sunshine and warm temperatures, and if you're in my neck of the woods, humidity. While nicer weather draws all of us out of our winter dens, there are some things we need to remember. This is especially true if our plan is to move all or part of our exercise regimen outside.

The first point to make is that taking your workouts outdoors is a great idea. The big world out there has a lot more to offer than your living room or basement. Even if you have a dedicated exercise space in your house, getting outside can offer a welcome change of pace. Are you a runner? Lose the treadmill and instead explore your neighbourhood as the sun comes up. Quiet streets, a slowly brightening sky, maybe even a glimpse of a deer or two...I'd certainly take that over a treadmill.

And that doesn't even take into account the boost your body will get from the extra sunshine. Just 15 minutes of direct exposure causes your body to manufacture literally tens of thousands of IU's of Vitamin D. Vitamin D has been found to increase the strength of your bones, your teeth, your heart, your immune system. It's pretty close to a supervitamin, and you get it just by being out in the sun. This doesn't mean you should pass on the sunscreen, but it does mean that even a short time outside on a sunny day can add a whole new dimension to improving your health.

If you're going to exercise outside, particularly as the temperature goes up, you need to know about two potentially serious medical conditions that can arise: heat exhaustion and heat stroke. One is a serious inconvenience; the other can kill you.

Heat Exhaustion

When you are active in a warm environment, whether that is outside on a hot day, or just in a warm room, your body temperature goes up. While a small increase in body temperature can actually be a good thing (loosens muscles and joints, can increase calorie burn), a significant increase can be a problem. Your body deals with excess heat by sweating. Water forms on your skin, it then evaporates and cools you off. While this is a normal and necessary response, excessive sweating can be a sign that heat exhaustion is looming.

If, in addition to sweating, you're experiencing the following symptoms:

1. Dizziness or confusion
2. Shallow, fast breathing
3. Pale skin
4. Rapid heartbeat
5. Fatigue or weakness

you may be suffering from heat exhaustion. Get out of the warm environment and head somewhere cool. Drink some cool water, lie down, put cold compresses on your forehead and the back of your neck. With heat exhaustion, the main goal of treatment is cooling off and relaxing. You might have noticed that some of the symptoms noted above aren't that different from what you'd experience through normal exercising (rapid heartbeat, sweating). When those are combined with the other symptoms, however, it's time to take action.

If you follow the treatment recommendations, all should be well in a short period of time. Continue to take it easy as your body temperature slowly returns to normal.

Heat Stroke

This is a very different animal. In heat stroke, the body can no longer cool itself off. Temperature keeps rising, and if it isn't controlled, can cause significant damage to the body. The biggest clue that you might be suffering from heat stroke is that you are no longer sweating. Your body simply can't handle the heat. In addition, you could experience the following:

1. Hot, dry skin
2. Vomiting
3. Shortness of breath, difficulty breathing
4. Serious dizziness and confusion
5. Loss of consciousness

The body's temperature rises above 40C/105F in cases of heat stroke. If you or someone you're with is experiencing the above symptoms, call 911 immediately. Heat stroke is not something to be treated at home. Very likely a person with heat stroke will be hospitalized for observation and given IV fluids. Severe heat stroke can lead to seizures and comas, so it's not something to mess with.

How do we avoid these problems in the first place? Two things: the right equipment and the right time of day.

As for equipment, the most important thing you can have with you when exercising outside is water. You lose water rapidly through sweating, but you also lose it through increased respiration. Your breath has water vapour in it, so the harder and faster you breathe, the more water you lose. Drinking eight ounces about 20 minutes before exercise, and then another four ounces every 20 or 30 minutes is often recommended. For me, that amount of water would leave me feeling bloated. Still, the importance of hydration can't be understated. You need to find what works for you.

(The other side of the coin is a condition called hyponatremia, or water intoxication. This comes from drinking too much water. It dilutes the electrolytes in the blood, and has its own host of ill effects. And you thought drinking water was the easy part of exercise.)

Sports drinks are useful if you're engaging in endurance work. In addition to water, they contain sodium and other electrolytes to replace what you lose in sweat. The only caveat I'd mention is that they are also frequently high in sugar. If weight loss is your goal, you can more than offset any good work you do exercising by drinking 200 or more calories while working out. A bottle of Gatorade, for example, has only 50 calories per serving, but each bottle (they say) has four servings. A smart idea would be to pour one-quarter of the bottle into another bottle, then top it up with water. Gatorade now has a low-calorie version of its main drink, with one-third the sugar and less than half the calories. Sugary drinks can actually leave your mouth feeling dry, as the sugar absorbs all the moisture in your mouth. Not what you want.

You also need to dress for the activity. There are a lot of different fabrics available that will wick away moisture from your skin quickly. All the big athletic apparel companies make them. While you're paying for the name to some degree, the technology does create garments more comfortable than sweat-soaked cotton.

The time of day you choose to exercise is also important. This is little more than common sense. If you want to avoid heat exhaustion/stroke, sunburns, and jogging past everyone in your neighbourhood when they're out sitting on their porch, don't go out between 10am and 3pm. The sun is lower in the sky outside those times, and the temperature is lower as well.

Summer is a great time to pursue your fitness outdoors. After a winter of hibernation, it can be a welcome change that inspires you to work even harder. Remember to prepare properly and watch out for signs that you're overdoing it, and the time from now to October can be prime time for your health and fitness.

Half The Battle

2010-06-10T13:27:00.000-07:00

For the last two seasons, I've enjoyed watching "The Biggest Loser" on television. One of this season's contestants brought home the fact that you can make whatever changes you want to the outside, it's the inside where real, life-altering evolution takes place.

I know that "The Biggest Loser" has its detractors. Critics say it's exploitative (I don't agree), that the environment is artificial and not replicable in real life (I agree to an extent) and that it's packaged in a way to make it entertaining television, not a true guide to fitness (I completely agree). All of that said, it can't be denied that the contestants on the show start the process in horrible shape both physically and mentally, and end it far better off. Physically, at least. That brings me to one of my favourite competitors from this season, Daris.

If you haven't watched the show, Daris George is a 25-year-old salesman from Ardmore, Oklahoma. He started the show weighing 346 lbs, and ended it weighing 178, a loss over a six-month period of 168 lbs, more than 48% of his initial bodyweight. Along the way he became the star athlete of the group, finishing a 26.2-mile marathon in 4 hours, 2 minutes. While at the Biggest Loser ranch, where the show is filmed, he certainly seemed to have everything going his way.

Then, however, before the show's second-last weigh-in, he went home for thirty days. The cocoon he'd been in was gone, and in its place were all the temptations, stresses and - even worse - negative thoughts that had brought him to 346 lbs in the first place. At the prior weigh-in he'd lost 10 lbs in a week; after 30 days at home (while training for a marathon, don't forget) he'd gained 2 lbs. He looked surprised and disappointed, but the reasons behind his weight gain show just how difficult it can really be to lose weight and keep it off.

Losing weight initially, especially if you have a lot to lose, is easy. If you're 100 lbs overweight, dropping the first 10 or 15 is probably not going to be that hard. Your weight-loss program is new, you're focused, you're eager. As time goes on, though, old thoughts and habits start to creep back into your life. I can't do this. Who am I kidding? I'm ALWAYS going to look like this. This isn't going to work. Destructive thoughts spawn destructive behaviours: choosing the couch instead of exercise, choosing easy processed food over whole foods you have to prepare, eating late at night...these are all habits that don't and won't die easily.

Daris had defeated the obese body he once had. What he hadn't defeated is the mindset that got him that way. This is why I've called this post "Half The Battle". Physical changes are great. They are, in truth, the yardstick by which we usually measure success. I do it too: I step on the scale regularly, and check my bodyfat monthly. But at least as important, really more important, are the internal changes that we simply must make if we are to maintain our hard-earned physical success.

It starts with a shift in how we see ourselves. I wrote a post some time ago entitled "You're Worth It", and that is really what it comes down to. Things don't have to stay the same. You don't always have to look that way. Once you convince yourself that you truly are worth a lifetime of health and wellness, you will have started to win the other half of the battle. The old temptations may still be there, in the form of your old favourite restaurant, or alcohol and nacho-fuelled nights out, but if you see these temptations for what they really are (i.e. a chance to show the world that you value yourself above the immediate gratification of bad choices), they won't be tempting any more.

Daris realized the triggers in his life that led to self-sabotage. Once he figured out what they were, he was able to deal with them. By the show's finale, he'd lost another 19 lbs, and looked truly happy with himself. Will he be able to keep the positive mindset that got him to that point? I don't know. But I do know that if he hadn't concentrated on the other half of the battle, he would have found himself right back where he started 168 lbs ago.