AtoZ Fitness Article Blog.

Sorry about the previous post looks like I can not include it in the article blog. Here is a great article Sarah the resident AtoZfitness trainer wrote for us.

More leisure time, for what?

Looks like 2007 isn’t quite my year, as far as fatloss and workouts and now it seems Saturn is in the astrological picture as well, slowing things down for the next 7 years … if you believe in that of course. Let’s say that, knowing about it will make it easier to work that much harder to counter the effect if effect there is, and if there’s nothing to it, well your work won’t be wasted anyway.

I mean, the ancients didn’t invent astrology out of the blue - oh, ok they did, the sky is blue, but you know what I mean - they must have observed and put things in relation and deducted and calculated. After all, they had no TV, PC, I-Pod, etc. and had all the time in the world to observe nature and the universe, when they weren’t working physically that is. Lucky them. Overall, they were in much better shape than we are. Work provided a workout, they ate healthy foods, indulged in a litle wine on days off and special occasions only, no sweets to speak of, no chemicals, no pressure to do this or that by the clock … even though the ancient Greeks did “invent time” and I think they were the ones who found the solar clock but I won’t swear that I’m right on that one.

What happened? We were mostly healthy, not overweight to any extent, going about our daily business and being if not ripped or overly lean at leaast in slim, good-looking shape We were supposed to get these machines and things to give us more leisure time. Sure, but then how come we’re all running after the clock like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, always late for something, never time to look after ourselves, and getting increasingly ill (we as a "nation" - nation in this case being the civilized, rich part of the world), fat and out of touch with our inner selves and nature? Where did our common sense and instincts go? Down the drain of “civilization”?

Looks that way.

Down memory lane a bit

What do we do with our extra spare time? Frankly, I don’t know. I remember when I was young,  my dad worked 5½ days a week. Saturday was the half day, ending at 1 PM rather than the normal 4:30 PM (this was in Norway, the workday is not cut with more than 30 minutes to eat some sandwiches brought from home at around 11:30 AM, and work ends at 4 to 4:30 PM on average, having started around 8 or 8:30 AM – in general).  

On Saturday afternoons, we’d do things in the garden, cleaning, cutting grass; or we’d wash the car, do some painting if that was needed, general up-keep in other words. If there wasn’t anything special to do, we’d take the car and go to a nearby forest (all are public domain in Norway) to look for berries, mushrooms, or just walk if it wasn’t the right season for anything, identifying tracks and flowers, birds and whatever else. Often on Sundays, we’d go hiking up some mountain (which I hated incidentally), have a sandwich and hot chocolate once up there, and walk back down. The only hike I truly enjoyed was one up to the top of Månefossen (Moon cascade, literally) because the trail, although steep, was easy to follow and the view along the cascade was breathtaking. Once it was warm enough, we’d hit the beach of course.

Not your average lie-down-and-tan beach trip. No, we’d climb the soft dunes (hard work), roll back down or even slide, and back up again – for hours! Sure, we went in the water too, but there was the “scavenging” for driftwood, cork-like fish-net floaters that had come off the nets and washed ashore, learning the names of different sea-weeds from dad, as well as the beach flowers; catching crabs and dried washed-up “sea-stars” in pink or white, and the occasional shell if there was a larger, nice one there. We were moving.

We walked to and from school, every day, regardless of weather. And yes, we had school on Saturday morning as well, since the adults worked, there was also school.

Then suddenly, no more school on Saturdays! And no more work for dad either, but they made the Thursdays longer, he’d work till 5:30 I think it was. That was no good, we were still hungry at the normal suppertime! So we added a snack on Thursdays. Did we do more on weekends than before, now that we had an extra half a day? No, because mom had always done her house cleaning on Saturday morning so that it was clean for the weekend, and it took her about a year to decide to change that to Friday instead. But even so, we didn’t do any extra anything on Saturday mornings once she changed her routine either.

Extra leisure time. To do … ? Nothing. Mom got a semi-automatic washing machine. Before, she had the old copper boiler for the whites and cottons, and a washing machine with the manual wringer (two rolls to put the wash through, and a manual swivel to make it pass through, letting the water fall back into the machine) I hated it when she put my favorite teddy bear through that wringer, I was sure Rosina was hurting, then she’d hang her by the ears with clothes-pins, torturist! The new machine, had two compartments. One to wash and one to spin, so she had to transfer the clothes from one side to the other. It was in a room off the kitchen, rather than in the basement. It made the laundry easier to do, took a little less time … to do what? Knit a little more while reading a book. No extra activity, rather less. Then came the dryer and the automatic washer which spun in the same compartment as it washed. Still less work and more knitting and reading.

One day, when I was about 8 years old, the TV entered our house. There were some shows we just had to watch, because the choice back then was so lousy anyway, that the few good ones you just couldn’t “afford” to miss if the TV was to have any use at all, and there was only one channel too, no choice of programs – unless you lived close enough to the Swedish border to get their channels as well, they had two! Of course, these were often at times we used to do something more active. Did we do that at other times instead? Only if they had to be done. And once we changed to color TV … I was 14 then … we watched even more. So now, with the satellites and HD, how can you tear yourself away from that box?

Gone were the hikes and climbs, gone the mushroom and berry picking trips, gone the play-times on the beach … the latter mainly because my brother and I were too old to play like we used to. Instead, he and I would do about 1-2 hours of biking after school (once the homework was done, never before) in the spring and summer, for 2 years only. When we moved to the northernmost city in the world, the biking also stopped. Our walk to school was a little longer though, and there was a steep hill which was a royal pain in the winter when it was icy! We also went for more hikes again, which was good, no high mountains there, it’s pretty level terrain so I didn’t mind hiking like I used to.

I remember the first ice cream cone of the year, on May 17^th which is the national day. That was also a hot-dog (one) and a bottle of orange soda (again, one). We would be allowed one small candy bar, a bottle of soda and a small bag of chips or pop corn on Saturday night (when I say small, that was the normal size back then, now everything has to be larger and bigger, when the smaller was big enough anyway). But we had to have something healthy first, most often some open sandwiches with good things piled on top. This was once the TV entered into things, before that we ate normal, healthy, home cooked meals every day reagrdless of week day, having a desert on Sunday linch only… also home made of course, no chemicals or over-use of sugar.

Otherwise, ice cream and soda was occasionally at grandma’s or at Christmas. Period.

And now, well …

now you can see kids and adults chowing down hamburgers, hot dogs, deep fried chicken and greasy fries all day and every day, often washed down with a large soda of some sort. Then they have a candy bar or an ice cream for desert, or just because they suddenly feel hungry or tired at some point during the day. The activity consists of walking from the house to the car (10 feet) from the car to the store (maybe 30 feet) moving the car over to the next store in the same shopping complex to avoid walking 50 or 60 more feet (both ways, remember, that’s 100-120 feet! Wow), and then the same 10 feet from the car to their house. This is not for everyone, but generally this seems to be the main activity most people I see outside their homes get. There are of course, a few who will use the stairs rather than the elevator, attend a gym and walk further than they strictly need to. Good for them!

And the experts analyse and wonder and study to figure out how come people are getting more and more overweight, why they have debilitating and lifethreatening diseases, they study to find cures, there’s huge amounts of money going to research, huge amounts for treatments of symptoms rather than working on the reason behind the symptoms, the actual causes of the trouble. Reading the above makes it plain what the trouble is, where the problem lies, what needs to be done. Most people do not need all the chemical drugs their doctors prescribe in order to mask what ails them. In fact, half the time they develop another ill from the side-effects of the drug treating the first symptoms! So they take a third pill, and a fourth, and

STOP for a minute, would you … why are you willing to spend big bucks on a “miracle pill” to get thin (which doesn’t work anyway and may have serious side effects) but run backwards from a store with healthy, from-scratch ingredients that have not been pre-treated by machines and added chemical to?  Why swallow any pill your doctor says will “save” you without checking into it a little more yourself? Eating the right foods, the ones nature meant us to eat in the first place, will help get your bodyfat down, your blood sugar normalized, your health back on track. Yes, you can even reverse some of the “Syndrome X” illnesses by eating clean and moving more. Make it a point to park at the far corner of the parking lot at the mall/ shopping center, and walk to every store you need to go to; going back to the car with the bags from each store. The human body was made to move, it was made to eat simple, natural foods; get back to the basics.

Clean foods, now what in the world do I mean by that? I mean … whole grain everything (pasta, rice, bread, flour, anything!), lean meats, fatty fish (because that fat is healthy fat), more egg whites than yolks (the fat is in the yolk, the protein is left in the white), low to 0% fat dairy; drink water and leave all the sodas, coffees etc. Cut the sugars, the refined carbohydrates; the processed foods, reduce microwave useage to a minimum, the chemical additives in foods even if the FDA and other government agencies say they’re ok to consume (this is often dictated by money anyway, and many of the allowed chemicals are later withdrawn because people have had problems) and do please stay clear of the “weightloss miracle pills” that only have a slimming effect on your wallet! Latest thing out, a green-tea supplement meant to burn fat … it was mixed with some other ingredient of course, and this “other” caused severe liver problems for three of the users at least, less extensive for those who stopped taking the pills as soon as they felt something was wrong. Mind you: Green Tea is healthy and will help burn fat, but do yourself the favor of drinking a cup or three per day only, not popping pills!

Conclusion?

I don’t know if there is one. When shows like “the biggest loser” with horrendously massive amounts of cardio and weight training per day make prime time as entertainment for the masses, we have a problem that lies deeper than just the individual overweight person. Of course it’s spectacular to watch, of course it gives overweight people the idea that they too can do the same. Then they try, cannot do the amount of training the candidates do because without living in a sheltered environment made exclusively for that purpose, you still have to live and work and take care of family. They get discouraged at not losing 7-11 pounds per week, and give up.

Healthy fat loss is 1-2 lbs/week, no more. If you lose more, chances are you are also losing muscle, and that is absolutely not good. The muscle is what helps your body burn yet more fat, because the muscle needs nourishment. Fat needs nothing, it’s not an active part of your metabolism, it just sits there, looking unsightly, being unhealthy, and hampering movement. It’s useful only if you get stranded on a desert island in the Arctic or Antarctic, keeping you warm and giving you reserves to live off of as long as you have water. Or in the event of war and incarceration to a prison camp – provided you can walk to it. But what are the chances of either happening? They are slim, honestly.

By changing your nutritional habits to the cleaner nutrition I’ve outlined above and consuming smaller meals every 2½ to 3 hours throughout the day, by adding some more movement to your life and walk rather than drive everywhere, you will already be able to see changes in your body. If you add active cardio training you will see an even better improvement, and when you add weight training you will have better results yet. Depending on your degree of overweight/ obesity, you may have larger than 2-lbs losses per week in the beginning whith this being related to muscle loss. There is also water retention to count on, and the more fat you need to shed the faster your body is likely to react to a change in the right direction.

You also have to make certain you drink 2 liters of water a day. Just drink. Rather than grabbing a coffee, a tea or a soda, reach for a bottle of water. YOUr kidneys will get the help they need to flush out the toxins realeased from your melting bodyfat, your natural cell breakdown, and any residual chemicls left in your body. You may feel discomfort for a week, maybe a little longer, depending on the state of your body (head aches, frequent trips to the rest room, mood swings …) but I promise they will subside and disappear rather quickly.

But, do allow yourself one treat per week. Have an unhealthy something once a week. Both for your mental health and for your taste buds. You have been used to eating these sweet or creamy things for years,  cutting that cold turkey will probably send you right back to eating nothing but that again. After a few weeks you may find that you start forgetting the day of the treat, you aren’t craving the unhealthy foods anymore. Don’t insist J wait till the following weekend to have a treat.

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This was a rather longer article than I usually write, but I could go on for pages and pages more! And one day I might actually get into more detail on one part or other of this one.

Sarah, CPT
http://www.healthylivesforyou.com

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