If we attended a lot of holiday parties, we feel sluggish from too much food, we have no energy, and it is a challenge to get out of that easy chair at home.  We just feel old.

We know this is a temporary condition.  It has happened before.  After the holidays we will just get out, walk it off and renew our gym membership. 

But this is the wrong time of year.  In many areas, it is cold – certainly too cold to go out and walk or go to the gym.

We’ll just stay in until spring, and then we’ll walk it off.  We’ll save our energy. 

We are as young as we feel or as old as we feel. 

When we are in our twenties, our energy seems boundless, and we can do anything.  In our thirties we start to slow down, but it is hidden by the nonstop activities of work and family.  We notice that we can’t eat endlessly any more and perhaps it shows in our growing clothing sizes.

When we pass forty and our lives aren’t really over, we are starting to get the message that maybe we should start taking care of ourselves.  We might join a gym or start running or take up a vigorous sport.  We’re going to have a body like those people on the magazine covers. 

But it hurts to exercise at first.  We used to be able to run like the wind, but now we are more like a wind gust – run, stop, and gasp. 

Now we see our lives as really over.  We see ourselves marching slowly toward the grave, practicing getting old by moving slower, taking our time, being careful about everything. 

We learn to think old thoughts and live in the past since our future is so limited.  After all, doesn’t society expect and encourage us to age gracefully and limit our activity?  Aren’t our same-age friends feeling the same way?  And if everyone thinks that way, isn’t it true? 

No. 

At any time on our life path, there are alternative ways less traveled. 

The main road we travel with others our age leads to weakening and decline in our bodies.  Hardly noticeable at first, we gradually find it harder to stand or walk for an hour, or get out of a low chair or up off the floor.    This is especially true if our work is sedentary and we are the same in the rest of our lives. 

Our far-flung ancestors developed a perfectly functioning and efficient body, which is why their descendents survived.  We only use roughly 100 calories to walk a mile, but few of us walk that far in a day. 

And so our neglected muscles fall into disuse and lose their full function.  We fulfill our own prophecy and slow down because our muscle power has deteriorated.  Ailments come and we associate it with ageing.

But new research shows exercise slows ageing by keeping the body functioning at its top level.  One of the best paths to long life is feeling good about ourselves, and looking good with lots of energy will do it. 

Olympic 14 gold-medal winner Michael Phelps consumes a staggering 12,000 calories per day and trains six hours a day six days per week, without fail.  When asked in an interview how he keeps so fit, he replied, “It’s the exercise.”

What type of exercise is best?  That’s up to the individual.  Although the majority of people don’t exercise enough or at all, it still remains a personal decision. 

If we pick activities we enjoy, we will stick with it longer. 

Make a list — anything we like that involves the components of fitness: motion, endurance, strength, balance and flexibility. 

Aerobic endurance will build heart and lungs and let us keep moving.  Muscular strength, flexibility and balance will help us get out of that chair gracefully.   

And we should keep our muscles guessing by changing activities every month or two. 

We all have a preference for sedentary activities and many of us feel out of place where everyone else seems fitter than we are. 

Aerobic exercise means getting our blood pumping and breathing hard.  It doesn’t mean killing ourselves.  It also doesn’t mean ‘doing it tomorrow.’

Warming up and cooling down are key components to avoiding aches that make us quit and postpone.  Starting at and stopping from full speed is never a good idea. 

Stretching our joints instead of our jeans keeps our muscles loose and improves our balance and flexibility. Mobility and freedom from pain gained from regular stretching is a reward that we feel every day.

What’s a good fitness level?  Forget the magazine covers. It is the level at which we feel good and can get around easily.  We don’t have to be muscle-bound as long as the core area around our trunk is strong. 

The Internet and bookstores are full of suggestions on stretching and exercises that can be performed privately. 

Set some achievable goals to keep, then keep them.

The best exercise is the activity we will enjoy regularly.

Live long and limber!

Command a vital life. Live free.

I am diligently working at paying attention to my weight, and for a time it was looking pretty good.  The ounces seemed to be slowly leaving.  Then the weather got cold, and there was that period of adjustment where I just stayed inside, and my activity level decreased.

With the economy the way it is and the presidential election, I was paying a lot of attention and spending a lot of time on one of my other blogs, financialcommand.com.  It seemed important that I research the mechanics and rules of the presidential election, the Constitution and Congress for myself and anyone else that was interested.  And, I felt it important to fight the lie and rumor mill by researching the truth and publishing it. 

In addition, I have been married for a good number of years, and I intend to stay married.  That means I have control over my diet during the day, but I eat what my wife prepares.  I try to minimize what I eat during the day, but she is an excellent cook, and although she is cooking smaller meals, I eat too much at night.

Now, nighttime is perhaps the worst time of the day to eat well.  I remember the old adage,

‘Breakfast like a king, Lunch like a prince, and Dine like a pauper.’

Good advice there, but perhaps written by a single person. 

Willpower, of course, is my failing.  I spend many hours at my computer, typing, meeting deadlines, drinking coffee and researching.  I am currently in a mode where dietetically I am doing most things wrong. 

I overstay my regular feeding until hunger sends me an urgent message.  Then I raid the refrigerator and eat too much.  The first time is late in the morning, since I am still full from the previous night.  The second time is late in the day, and too near dinner, since I am still digesting my first emergency feed.  But that doesn’t stop me from eating a full dinner.  Ugh!

Don’t get me wrong, I have not regained everything I ever lost, but I can see the pounds creeping up again.  So, here’s my November resolutions (why wait for the New Year rush).

I will return to chewing my food to a pulp before swallowing, and putting down my utensils between bites.

1. I will cut back on my evening consumption, eating only one portion (our stomachs are only as big as our two fists held together).
2. My supper meal will be the last consumption of the day, so I can sleep on an empty stomach, and wake up hungry.
3. I will get a regular full night’s sleep (too many deadlines recently).
4. I will eat a portion-controlled breakfast within one hour of waking.
5. I will lay out, in advance, small portions of food to consume at four-hour intervals, and eat them at those times.
6. I will set my timer for one hour of work between 5-10 minute periods of stretching, cardio exercises and hand-weight activity, using whatever weight is comfortably heavy.
7. I will focus on health and fitness and let weight follow those priorities.

I don’t necessarily want to be thin.  I want to be strong.  I want to live a few active years longer.

My body is a machine in which my life force resides.  Medicine is advancing to the point where body parts can be replaced and life extended, but if my machine stops functioning, I die.

I’ve included some cardio and muscle activities that are easy to do in almost any room.  They can be done in any order (except for stretching). 

The only special equipment needed is a hand weight (or two).  The weight is your choice.  You can do the activities without any weights as well.  The pull-up requires a pull-up bar that hangs from a doorframe without damage, available at around $29.

Stretch:

• Stretch first and last!!
• Reach up, lean to each side in turn
• Twist
• Spread legs, hang head down -hold

Cardio: get out of breath

• Power march
• Step tap legs apart, and raise arms
• Do the Chubby Checker twist
• Imitate throwing the Olympic hammer (or shot-put)
• Sit down on a chair and get up without use of hands – repeat
• Get down on the floor and get up – repeat (this uses all your muscles, and you are the weight)

Sculpt muscles:

• Squat with legs spread and return
• Sit in a chair and raise one or both legs and hold
• Hold the back of the chair and raise a leg and hold
• Lunge forward big step – repeat
• Lean back against a wall and slide down to sitting position – hold
• Pushup from knees with ankles crossed – hold, repeat
• Pull-up (requires door frame device – available for around $29)
• Sit-up slowly with legs held to the floor – repeat
• Straight crunch up from the floor – a few inches – hold, repeat
• Side crunch up reaching to side – hold, repeat, alternate sides
• Use weight for concentration curl each arm
• Use weight to reach behind head and hold
• Use weight while leaning over – simulate pulling on pants action – repeat
• Use weight while leaning over -swing weight back – repeat

Measure your current fitness with pushups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and wall-sit length.

If I do these for 10 minutes several times a day, I will be better for it.  Want to join me?

Live aVital Life

BobG

I never used to have a problem with weight, until I grew up, married and started having children. As they grew, I grew. They grew vertically, and I grew in circumference.

However, there comes a time when a decision has to be made. For years, my doctors told me the horror stories of how I was in danger if I didn’t lighten up. I decided to find out for myself.

It is very easy to preach to a plump person. Scare tactics, like early disease and death may motivate them for a time to diet. But why do so many people go on eating too much when overweight is uncomfortable, unattractive and considered danger to health?

It is also easy to preach the psychology of willpower. Just eat less and exercise more to get to a healthy weight. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But science is now realizing that there are more reasons for overweight than being weak-willed. There are many people who eat as a comfort to ease feelings of rejection or stress. There are many reasons for that, and I don’t mean to enter the psychological realm. But these emotions force these otherwise rational people to overeat against the advice and counsel of doctors, relatives and friends, both against their own common sense and their most compelling conscious desires.

There is evidence that a person’s body weight has something to do with inheritance. Studies have shown that around 10 percent of children with normal weight parents grow up overweight, but when one parent is fat, the rate grows to 50 percent, and when both parents are fat, the rate grows to 80 percent. Although this tends to point to parental example, identical twins brought up separately and exposed to different eating habits exhibit the same tendencies.

We all know that food intake is regulated by appetite. We eat when we are hungry and (hopefully) stop when we are no longer hungry. For almost everyone, there is an ideal weight for each person where the body will automatically adjust within a small percentage. Even the grossly overweight person will have to lift and move those extra pounds with every step, and will settle at the weight where intake balances out with the exercise of simply moving.

In my case, my appetite was controlled by waste. As I was growing up, my mother used to tell me to “clean my plate, there are people starving in China,” and I received a rare crack, when I once replied, “Name two.”

The mold was being cast. Although I never used the “starving people” line with my children, I secretly attempted to avoid waste myself. I not only cleaned my plate, but the cooking pots as well. Active as I was, the waste in my house went to my waist.

I am a tall person. I grew to 6 foot 4 inches until gravity started winning, and has taken back a half inch. But at that height, I also grew wider and heavier, until the scales seemed to say, “One person at a time, please.”

When I reached 280 pounds with the prospect of 300 in the near future, I said “Stop.” Photos showed me seemingly about to give birth. Relatives have always said I have my mother’s nose, but I seemed to have inherited her tendency to be plump as well. I forced my weight down from 280 to 255 pounds by sheer willpower, but in my estimation I still have 30 pounds to go. To break the plateau I am now at, I decided I have to learn for myself how my body processes energy, and what weight management is all about.

There is a lot of information out there, but sometimes it is too much to grasp. I am a hands-on person, and I learn by learning. I learned that I am only eight pounds away from not being ‘obese’ according to my BMI (Basal Metabolism Index). Yaay! Small steps.

I learned that if we refer to appetite control like a thermostat and call it an ‘appestat’ we can see the similarity in operation. When heat is needed, a thermostat sends a message to the furnace to burn more fuel, and if there is not enough fuel readily available, to get more.

The appestat works the same. Heat is energy, and fuel is calories. When energy is needed, more calories are required, and hunger alerts the person of the need through hunger.

Appestats are set on automatic to maintain a given weight (sometimes called a setpoint). For a person whose appestat is set too high, forcing it down can be torture, like living in a cold house. The appestat is very clever, and if calories are not forthcoming, energy is automatically conserved. A diet that restricts calories restricts energy.

A person on a diet is manually controlling the appestat. But if control is relaxed, the appestat works to restore the original weight which it considers normal. That is why people who lose a lot of weight in a relatively short period of time, generally regain it.

Manually controlling the appestat can be achieved through force of willpower, pills, or trick diets that fool the body, but as soon as the ‘trick’ is stopped, the appestat attempts to return its host to their normal weight.

And where is the appestat? It seems to be located in the hypothalamus, located at the base of the brain. It is the body’s command center of comfort, a regulator, functioning as a thermostat, regulating body heat through gentle, almost unnoticeable vibration of the muscles, as a ‘hydrostat’ regulating water content and as a ‘glucostat’ regulating sugar content – all through sampling the bloodstream.

The liver stores a starchlike substance called glycogen, which is dribbled into the bloodstream as needed, and converted into glucose. The body’s cells absorb this glucose and produce energy.

If too much glucose is sensed in the bloodstream, the pancreas produces insulin which shifts the metabolism into storage mode, converting excess glucose into glycogen which is removed from the bloodstream and stored in the liver and muscles. When the liver and muscles are at glycogen capacity, the excess is converted into new fat and stored in ‘adipose’ tissue deep under the skin.

As a side note, an adult man tends to carry body fat in his chest, abdomen and buttocks, producing an “apple” shape. An adult woman tends to create a “pear” shape as fat gathers in her breasts, waist, hips, and buttocks. I used to have a barrel chest, but now I’m just shaped like a barrel.

If too little glucose is sensed in the bloodstream, the first activity of the body is to feed, even though there may be plenty of stored energy in fat cells. The hypothalamus activates the behavior that each individual has for finding and consuming food. When their stomach starts making contraction noises, people become aware of their hunger.

The first line of defense against hunger is the liver. Once the body has finished digesting all of the carbohydrates that were last eaten, the pancreas produces glucaGON that stimulates the breakdown of stored glycoGEN back into glucose and releases it to maintain glucose in the blood. The liver holds about a 12-hour supply of glucose in its glycogen.

Once the liver runs out of glycogen, it converts amino acids, normally used as building blocks for body proteins, into glucose, and tissues like muscle cells start burning fatty acids, reducing the glucose requirements. This accounts for loss of energy when fasting.

Fat cells may be emptied, but they are never eliminated. The number of fat cells grows through puberty and then remains the same, except in cases of great weight gain. When fat cells have expanded to their capacity, they can divide and grow more cells. But even if fat cells are emptied they are always waiting to be fed.

Knowing the rules of weight and working with them instead of fighting them will lead to success. The rules may not be fair, but they are the rules of nature. They can be bent but not broken. Success in weight control means eating differently, modifying behavior.

The biggest obstacle to losing weight is HUNGER. It makes us miserable; it is the wolf at the door. It always wins and destroys our diet plans in the process. When hunger becomes unbearable, we reach out for foods that will give us instant relief. Those few cookies can add 300 calories in a matter of minutes and subject our blood sugar to wildly swinging glucose levels with associated cravings, appetite and mood swings.

How can we overcome the hunger monster? By stealth, like a spy in the night. With patience by reducing calorie intake without alarming the body guardian. I have given up trying to lose weight by pounds. I seek to lose ounces, knowing that, for example, when I lose an ounce a day (average), I will lose a pound in 16 days. That’s only about 200 calories a day out of my fat cells instead of through my mouth. Even if I stretch it to 20 days and lose three pounds in two months, those three pounds are gone!

I keep pretty close tabs on my weight. It has become important to me to guard my weight loss. When I see a weight gain, I immediately go into ‘bare bones’ mode, eating as little as possible for a few days until I erase the gain. Then I return to my plan. I have found that weight quickly gained can be quickly lost. It’s only a few days after all.

I am keeping a gentle finger on my appestat. The appestat has a setting that it considers normal. I’m looking to create a new normal. I was told that after six months to a year the weight you are at is considered normal. I can personally say that is true. I have been at my current weight (plus five pounds) for about a year, and if I gain by eating out a lot, my appetite diminishes, and I soon return to my new normal. My real goal is to feel normal at 30 pounds lower. I’ll keep in touch.

What I’ve learned about weight control is:
· Eat often. Keeping food in my stomach reassures my brain that food is plentiful.
· Eat little. I eat only as much as I need to stop hunger, and then I stop!
   It’s okay to leave food on my plate, Mom. I take smaller portions, so I waste less.
· Eat anything! I eat healthy, but allow myself breaks (in moderation). I never feel deprived.
   I have snacks in my house, but only one type. When I eat it often, it becomes boring.
· Chew well. Mastication is the first stage of digestion, notifying the brain when to stop. I enjoy my bites, sampling the flavor and texture of the food in my mouth as I chew each bite at least 30 times.
·  Take a breath. Putting my utensils down as well as taking a breath between bites slows me down.

Change is really exchange. I am exchanging my food-seeking behavior. The old habits erode with every passing day. An urge will pass in 20 minutes. When I get a sensory craving for food and I am not hungry, I do something else for 20 minutes. A short physical activity is perfect. A mantra that helps me is “Sweet treat, cross the street.” It is my taking of an immediate and purposeful action that suppresses the urge.

A small intake of food goes a long way in our bodies. Evolution designed us that way to go all day on a single meal if necessary. Walk or run a mile and burn only 100 calories.

Good luck to us all! Have courage and keep moving! Hang in there, we can do it!

-We learn nothing from success. Everything we learn, we learn from failure.
Here’s to living a vital life.
BobG