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Most Vital day of Year for Exercise

Most Vital day of Year for Exercise

That’s right! If you don’t have some serious physical activity planned the day before Thanksgiving, get planning. Here’s why:

I’m sure you’ve heard by now that tomorrow, on Thanksgiving, the average American will consume 4500 calories and about 230 grams of fat. (the avergae caloric intake of a 450 lb man)

For those looking to at least maintain or even lose weight, the common strategy is to “work it off” after the fact. Well, you can get it done … but that will require 3x the effort than “working it off” BEFORE the fact.

Here is an important “fitness parable” that will explain what I mean. Picture it this way:

It’s your job to maintain the balance of liquid water in a bucket, not letting any convert to ice by spilling over onto the freezing ground. Of course you don’t want to completely run out of liquid water either – but that’s not a big concern considering you are getting it refilled 3-5x/day. Right now, your bucket is about 90% full because you are doing a good job of continually siphoning out water. Kudos.

Thanksgiving feast

Here’s the problem: your family has a plan to sabotage the balance of your bucket tomorrow. (what!?)  Yep, they are planning on dumping a whole 50% of your bucket’s TOTAL capacity into it … in one day!  That’s a problem, considering you are already 90% full.  How do you plan to cope with that impending mess?

You’ve got 2 options:

1. Siphon out about 50% of the water currently in your bucket, creating a demand for the water that’s coming tomorrow, thereby avoiding any mess.

or…

2. Go ahead and let the bucket overflow, and endure the conversion of the liquid water to dangerous ice. Then start chiseling away and melting the ice so you can pour it back into your bucket – all the while siphoning out enough to make room in the bucket for water that once was ice. Finally, do some serious siphoning to get back to balance.

It’s your call, but it would be a heck of a lot easier to exercise intensely today in order to drain your bucket [i.e. muscles and liver], creating room and demand for the extra water (calories/glucose) coming tomorrow … than to let those extra calories (liquid water) convert to stored body fat (ice) … which you’ll have to breakdown (chisel) to liquid water (calories) before you even can siphon them out (burn) them again.

I took the hard route to explain a simple point, but I wanted you to realize how much easier it is to use exercise as a preventive activity vs. a curative activity. Exercise BEFORE over-eating is a MUCH more efficient strategy to maintain weight than exercise AFTER overeating. A few reasons include the positives of elevated resting metabolism, exercise post-oxygen consumption, and the caloric demand of muscle fiber repair. Not to mention, avoiding the extreme negative of new fat cell creation.

So if it has to be one or the other (both is best), challenge yourself physically BEFORE the big meal. Let’s face it, it’s much more likely to happen before we clobber ourselves with food, anyway :)

Client Types: Results will be Relative

The Ownership Client:  This client understands that their improvements in health and fitness are ultimately up to them, and they accept that any decline in the same is their own fault. They look at their trainer and nutritionist as educated professionals who can provide information, motivation, structure, and accountability that they need to change. This client appreciates having the “mirror” held to them and seeing what behaviors they need to modify in order to modify their body. This client trains their upper body when their lower body is injured, and exercises when feeling under the weather in order to heal faster. This client schedules an extra session for the week to help relieve stress at work and get energized to better deal with it. When necessary, this client reschedules sessions with their trainer instead of just canceling. This client logs their diet on their smartphone when they can’t get to a desktop computer. They write their diet on a 3×5 when their phone doesn’t have internet. Ultimately, this client sees tremendous results, and usually quickly.
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Results not excuses sign
The Excuse Client: This client has a great reason for everything they haven’t done. They have an excuse for every session they miss. Although only their ankle is injured, they use it as a chance to not train the rest of their body. Although exercise is good for congestion, they take it as an opportunity to skip again. Instead of negotiating an intensity change with their trainer on rough days, they throw out exercise altogether. They “can’t” train while they are out of town, even though sessions are offered via facetime, skype, or tango. If their regular time doesn’t work on a given day, they use it as an excuse to cancel altogether instead of pitching their trainer some other time options. Instead of logging their diet via their smart phone when they are away from their usual computer, they use it as an excuse to not log their food at all. Basically, in their array of excuses, this client ultimately excuses themselves from results. On top of that, they usually excuse themselves from responsibility in the end as well.
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The Accountability Client:  This client yearns for someone to watch their every move. They enjoy sharing their problems and struggles, whether or not they ever act on fixing or overcoming them. They want someone with them every step of the way, although they often want to be the one leading the steps and deciding which way they go. Company on their journey is more important than their destination. This is the type of client that would take their trainer everywhere if they could swing the expense, instead of having to implement self-control or self-discipline. When this client gets off track, it’s because someone wasn’t hovering over them and protecting them from themselves. This client seeks out more and more “umbrellas,” instead of getting out of the rain. This client can see results, but better have an endless supply of time and money.
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The Critical Client: This client is skeptical of every piece of advice that comes their way from the very professionals they hired to help them them. Instead of applying the advice they hear, they seek out sources to try to disprove it. They waste a lot of time and energy arguing with the person who is only trying to help them. They manufacture crazy dramas and storyboards that even include their trainer and nutritionist wanting them to stay out of shape, as if that would somehow profit a fitness business more than delivering amazing results. This person usually sees very slow change if any. However, they do learn a lot and will dodge a fair share of health-destroying bullets. Even then, they will often spend more time coaching friends and family instead of putting into practice their accumulated knowledge. This client has been categorizing their acquaintances since they started reading the post, while usually putting themselves into category 1.
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The Blame Client: This client is out of shape because of the genes their parents and grandparents handed down. They have diabetes, cancer, or heart disease because it “runs in their family.” They don’t eat right because their spouse doesn’t eat right. They keep junk food in the house because of their kids. They don’t lose weight because their trainer doesn’t have them doing zumba on one leg, upside down, on the new vibration machine, while wearing the thermogenic ab belt. They don’t improve their diet because their nutritionist doesn’t give them enough healthy recipes. They don’t drink a protein shake because the manufacturers can’t make one that tastes good. They don’t record their diet because the software developer didn’t make it user friendly enough. They drink alcohol because of the clients they have to entertain. They can’t stay in shape because their boss makes them travel. They are only fat because of stress (and their parents, who also must have been stressed). This client client will blame their trainer and nutritionist if they don’t see progress. A tough “don’t buy the blame” and “nothing to lose anyway” approach is needed from coaches to be successful.
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The Denial Client: This client believes that the assessment process must have been flawed. There is no way that they are that % body fat! They think that hitting their ideal body composition will leave them a “sickly” lightweight. They think that they have just as much muscle now that they had in their 20’s, even though trying to bench or squat what they did then would crush them. They believe that because they “haven’t weighed that since high school” that they shouldn’t be that weight today. They don’t like to look in mirrors too long. They often won’t share what the scale says, even though the world can see them every day. They either wear baggy clothes and think they look good, or are in such denial that they wear too-skimpy or too-tight stuff as some would say – about “30 pounds” too early. The good news is that these clients can see great results because they are proven visionaries, but only after facing and accepting the real facts of the current situation. Looking at their own all-sides photos in a swimming suit is beneficial. Studying photos of people at 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50% body fat and comparing to their own helps motivate as well.
How do You Get Energy to Start a Country? 2 Hours at a Time, Rain or Shine

How do You Get Energy to Start a Country? 2 Hours at a Time, Rain or Shine

Thomas Jefferson

So what was Thomas Jefferson’s “secret?” It was exercise. (how convenient for us, eh?) Furthermore, he was SERIOUS about it. Two-hours-a-day serious about it. Let this collection of his quotes on the matter educate and motivate you. Don’t cheat yourself by only reading a few short ones. Take 2 minutes and read them all. It’s interesting to read one’s perspective from so long ago, when horses instead of cars were used for transportation.

 

He warned against the gain of disease, and the loss of happiness – both results of avoiding exercise:

 

“Your love of repose will lead, in its progress, to a suspension of healthy exercise, a relaxation of mind, an indifference to everything around you, and finally to a debility of body, and hebetude of mind …”

 

He noticed that exercising people had better friendships:

“Exercise and application produce order in our affairs, health of body, chearfulness of mind, and these make us precious to our friends …”

 

He saw the decline in people’s health when replacing walking with “sitting” to get places:

“The Europeans value themselves on having subdued the horse to the uses of man. But I doubt whether we have not lost more than we have gained by the use of this animal. No one has occasioned so much the degeneracy of the human body. An Indian goes on foot nearly as far in a day, for a long journey, as an enfeebled white does on his horse, and he will tire the best horses. There is no habit you will value so much as that of walking far without fatigue.”

 

He purposely left time in the day for exercise:

“… leaving all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading; I will rather say more necessary, because health is worth more than learning.”

 

He understood the influence of the body on the mind, and the mind’s dependence on the body:

“I give more time to exercise of the body than of the mind, believing it wholesome to both.”

 

He didn’t buy the popular misconceptions of the day regarding illness, and accepted no excuse not to exercise:

“Not less than two hours a day should be devoted to exercise, and the weather should be little regarded. A person not sick will not be injured by getting wet. It is but taking a cold bath, which never gives a cold to any one. Brute animals are the most healthy, and they are exposed to all weather, and of men, those are healthiest who are the most exposed. The recipe of those two descriptions of beings is simple diet, exercise and the open air, be it’s state what it will; and we may venture to say that this recipe will give health and vigor to every other description.”

 

He recognized the benefits of resistance training, and the response of a muscle group to challenge:

“Encourage all your virtuous dispositions, and exercise them whenever an opportunity arises, being assured that they will gain strength by exercise as a limb of the body does, and that exercise will make them habitual…Give about two of them [hours] every day to exercise; for health must not be sacrificed to learning. A strong body makes the mind strong …”

 

He was serious about his exercise, and recognized the importance of recording progress in even the simplest activity:

“I step a French mile of 1000 toises = 6408 Eng.f. in 1053 double steps. This yields 3f. & 1/2I. English to the step and 1735 steps to the mile. I walk a French mile in 17 1/2 minutes. A French mile is = 1.21 or 1 1/4 Eng. miles. I walk then at a rate of 4 3/20 miles or 4.mi.264 yards an hour. Walking moderately in the summer I walked a Fr. mile of 1000 T = 6408 f. in 1254. steps and in 26′. That gives 2.55 f. to the step and 2066 1/2 steps to the Eng. mile 1735 the brisk walk of winter 331… “

 

He gave great advice to those concerned about starting exercise, when they hadn’t done much before:

“No one knows, till he tries, how easily a habit of walking is acquired. A person who never walked three miles will in the course of a month become able to walk 15. or 20. without fatigue. I have known some great walkers and had particular accounts of many more; and I never knew or heard of one who was not healthy and long lived. This species of exercise therefore is much to be advised. Should you be disposed to try it, as your health has been feeble, it will be necessary for you to begin with a little, and to increase it by degrees.”

 

He knew that you had nothing to gain by skipping exercise:

“If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong. The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise …”

 

He had to tell people over and over again, because they either didn’t get it, or didn’t do it:

“I repeat my advice to take a great deal of exercise, and on foot. Health is the first requisite after morality.”

50% Diet? 50% Exercise? Dallas Personal Trainer Examines the Contributions to Weight Loss

50% Diet? 50% Exercise? Dallas Personal Trainer Examines the Contributions to Weight Loss

You see all kinds of estimates on weight loss. It’s 50% diet, 50% exercise, or maybe it’s 25% diet, 75% exercise, and so on and so forth. Let’s examine the implications of those statements and come to a deeper understanding of what all affects our weight on a week to week basis. We are about to get technical, but stay with me through this detailed explanation and you at least won’t ever forget the point I’m making. Neither will you doubt it’s validity, and hopefully you’ll act on its truth.

Here’s the WEEKLY WEIGHT BALANCE EQUATION below (apart from the effects of water retention and the thermogenic effects of particular nutrients). Look at the formula below and think about it for a moment (I hope you haven’t forgotten algebraic terms).

weekly weight balance equation

Looking at the left side of the formula:

There are 4 calories in a gram of carbs, 4 in a gram of carbohydrate, 9 in a gram of fat, and 7 in a gram of alcohol. There are also 7 days in a week. Now look at the equation again and you should understand the 1st number of every term on the left side of the equation. The left side is your total “energy in.”

Considering the right side of the formula, now (energy out):

We all have an RMR, or resting metabolic rate, which is the number of calories your body would burn if you were seated in that chair all day long. This RMR is mostly due to your frame, muscle (just 1 of the reasons resistance training is important), and cardio conditioning, while only fractionally due to the amount of fat you are carrying.

Your Lifestyle Activity Factor is the % of calories above your RMR that you burn in your daily activities, outside of purposeful exercise. A construction worker’s LAF might be 80%, or RMR x 1.8, while a software engineer’s LAF might be 20%, or RMR x 1.2.

Your exercise intensity could be expressed by your average caloric burn per workout. For example, you estimate your burn with something like a heart rate monitor and total an average of 600 calories per 45 minute training session. Your exercise frequency, obviously, is the number of times in a week you do that exercise and burn those 600 calories.

Let’s bring this formula to life for a moment. Consider a typical 250 lb male eating 2500 calories a day. (if that sounds high, record your diet for a while and you might be surprised to see where you are at). If that person is eating the usual 15% protein, 35% fat, 45% carbs, 5% alcohol, and only 10g of fiber (like many of our clients when they start with us), here’s what their left side number equates to:

17,220 calories of “energy in”

Now if that same person has an RMR of 1700 and works in front of a computer all day long, while only exercising 2 days a week and burning 300 calories per session, their right side number equates to:

14,888 calories of “energy out”

That, my friends, yields:

2,332 calories to be stored WEEKLY

There are 3500 calories in a pound of fat, which means that this person would gain:

.67 pounds of fat gained per week, or 35 lbs in a year!

Let’s increase their exercise intensity to 500 per workout, and double their frequency to 4x / week. What do we get? An energy expenditure of 16,280, and a weekly extra 1392 calories to be stored:

.40 pounds of fat gained per week, or 21 lbs still gained in a year!

So what shall we do? Change our eating habits? Hek no! (an all too common answer – or, “I don’t eat that bad.”) Ok, let’s just workout 6 days a week, same new intensity. What do we get? An energy expenditure of 17,280, and a weekly BURN of 60 calories. Yeah! (read: sarcasm)

That’s a weekly weight loss of .01 lbs a week, or 1/2 a pound per year!! Excited yet?

I think you see my point. Why do you suppose so many are frustrated by the weight loss they see, or should I say don’t see, on exercise only programs?

The percentage of your weight loss that is due to eating right, and the % that is due to exercise, all depends on the depth of the changes you make in either arena. But I can tell you this, and you can SEE this now:

It is VERY DIFFICULT to change the scale on exercise alone!

So LET’S JUST SAY (read in Ron White’s voice) this person followed a more comprehensive approach and reduced their calories to 1800, making it easy by saying goodbye to alcohol most days of the week, tripling their daily fiber with quality carbs to stay full, and reducing their fat intake to 20% to make room for 35% protein. Let’s have them exercising just the minimum recommended MOST days of the week (that = 4). What does our math look like then?

11,760 energy calories in and 16,280 energy calories out, and

a weekly weight loss of 1.29 lbs per week, or 67 lbs lost in a year!

Now that’s something to get excited about :)

Burn More Bridges

Burn More Bridges

Success or failure sign

The usual words of “wisdom” you hear are “DON’T burn any bridges.” Well, I’m calling that out as terrible advice.

Although there are some situations where keeping a “bridge” intact is a smart move, it’s also a crutch many lean on when they lack the strength to leave something behind and give an all-out commitment to the new and better thing.

It could be a bad relationship you won’t let go that hinders your ability to find a good one. It could be a part-time job you keep as ” backup ” that distracts you from the full potential of the new one. It could be an old friend that’s worth dropping because they just bring you down or stress you out. It could even be a piece of furniture you want to keep even though it clutters your house and takes away from the nicer piece you already bought. You get the point.

Well, when it comes to health and fitness, this failure to burn bridges allows people to cross back over the canyons they conquered, right back to the same poor habits and choices they had previously left. It’s unfortunate, and it tells me that they really didn’t get it or understand it at the deepest level. There was no solid conviction that said: “never again.” In effect, they didn’t burn the bridge.

Just like the aforementioned examples, there are some foods, some drinks, some behaviors that are worth leaving … for good. Burn the bridge. Don’t allow yourself a way back.

What’s that look like? First of all, get that particular food you supposedly gave up out of the house. Secondly, tell your family you are never eating it again. Furthermore, tell your friends it’s something you are permanently dropping from your diet because it simply holds you back from what you really want. Guess who will remind you of that commitment in case you forget? You better believe it – your friends and family. And is that a bad thing? Nope, not at all. Because you have left it behind, and in a moment of potential weakness, you’d rather not hear it from your friends and family than partake. That does nothing but help you, right?

Here’s another bridge to burn: those clothes that are now too big that you still have sitting in your closet. Why? In case you go back? Why even think that way? Get rid of them! You aren’t going back, right? And if for some crazy reason you do, you should incur the expense of the poor decision. You see, the more penalties you put in place for yourself going the wrong direction, the less likely you will go that way! Stop making it comfortable and easy to fail. It’s the first step of success.

What about those friends you have who, truth be told, are only your friends because you share the same desire for gluttony and sloth? Sounds intense, doesn’t it, lol? Hey, sometimes you’ve got a step back and call stuff like it is :) Would they still hang out with you if you wanted to go do something active? If not, ask yourself if their presence in your life is making you healthier or bringing you down? Harsh, huh? Seriously though, if getting in shape is important to you and every interaction with a particular someone gets you further from that goal, maybe you should 1) share your concern and make a change in your activities together or 2) burn that bridge. If they are a good friend (the kind you should have), they’ll respond to option #1 with no problem. They may even follow and appreciate your lead.

It’s much like credit card debt, right? If someone had struggled with debt for years, and FINALLY made a big leap in the right direction by paying off a certain credit card, the best idea may be to literally do some “plastic surgery” – cut that thing up! It’s a way of burning a bridge to bad behavior. If that person leaves that card open and sitting in their wallet, won’t they be more likely to fall right back into the trap they just climbed out of? The same applies to your health and fitness.

Go BURN SOME BRIDGES, so you’ll stay on the right path and keep moving forward.

Does your age REALLY affect metabolism?

Does your age REALLY affect metabolism?

Human figure with magnifying glass

Everyone and their mother will tell you that age negatively affects their metabolism.

Sure, it’s a quick and easy way to explain why you “just aren’t as thin as you once were,” but is your chronological age truly to blame for all the weight gain?

Do we see a general increase in weight as people in our society get older? Certainly we do. There seems to be a “correlation,” but is it “cause and effect?”

It’s not exactly the turning of the clock that does it.

It’s the loss of lean body mass, and that’s exactly what researchers cite when explaining our “situation.”

In a rather oxymoronic statement, we say “metabolism declines naturally 2-3% per decade, with the loss of lean body mass.”

The next question one should be asking is “do we naturally lose lean body mass?”

The biggest reason we lose lean body mass is NOT due to our chronological age, but rather the loss of physical activity AS we age – and it’s largely our fault.

Think about it. In high school, where you may have been your lightest at your current height, were you perhaps more active than you are now? Were you involved in sports? Cheerleading? Physical education? Active recreation? Did you play outside? Did you jump rope? Ride a bike? Run? Do jumping jacks? March in a band? Three-legged races? Tug of war? Dodgeball?

When you played your sport, did you play hard? Were you perhaps more intense compared to these days, if you are still enjoying your sport here or there. What about practice? Are you practicing for 2 hours a day, 4 days a week like in high school, before that big Friday night game? Or do you just show up to play recreationally on Saturday, having not put too much previous effort into your performance.

What does fun look like these days? Is it a big dinner, or is it a night of dancing? Is it a movie, or a slam-dunk competition in your backyard on that 8 foot goal?

By now you get my point. We lose muscle because we lose the NEED for it. It’s supply and demand. Create a little demand for muscle, and your body will supply it (with the right materials coming in). Then use that supply to create a little more demand, and so on …  Instead, we let things snowball in the wrong direction, then feel better about ourselves by using age as a scapegoat.

You CAN be stronger with MORE lean body mass and a FASTER metabolism NEXT year compared to last, even 5-10 years from now!

Now, if your currently at MAXIMUM ( or near maximum) physical potential (how would you know?), you obviously won’t be able to make huge improvements over the next 5-10 years. (congrats, you probably don’t really need to)

But …. did you know that there are people who at 50 years of age have 20 pounds more muscle than they did at 25 years of age?   Do you think their metabolism has “naturally declined?”

See the good news yet?  You can “naturally increase” your metabolism with age!  It all depends on what you DO with the time that is passing!

If you spent the next 10 years challenging your body and pushing your limits, do you think you would be stronger and have a faster metabolic rate, or do you think you would be “naturally weaker and fatter” simply because you would be 10 years older?

If you answered with the latter, then I feel sorry for you. You have accepted a hopeless outlook – one that robs you of responsibility and therefore any power over the future of your physical quality of life.

I hope you chose the former. If you did, you can do something about your health, your weight, and your performance. You are “of the right mind” and that means your on right path. Just keep moving, and don’t be afraid to get in the fast lane!

If you’re ready to defy the myths about aging and build the strength and lean muscle your body needs, personal training can help you stay on track. Our expert trainers design customized programs that challenge your body in the right ways, helping you build lean mass, boost your metabolism, and improve your overall health — no matter your age.