Nov

1

Secret Food Cures

Filed Under Health, Illness and Injury, Nutrition, Review | 5 Comments

One of my readers brought the following site to my attention: Secret Food Cures. The site is a commercial one, so be ready for lots of advertising and product pitches if you go there. The main subject of the site is a book written by three sisters which details a variety of food based cures for conditions ranging from migraines to asthma. Some examples are:

  • Curing migraines with lemon rinds
  • Cherry Bark tea makes asthma go away
  • Gin soaked raisins to relive the symptoms of arthritis
  • Chicken soup that cures colds

Personal Disclosure

Before I move on to my opinion of all this, allow me to disclose something about myself. I am not a fan of the modern medical system. We’ve become too reliant on pills to the point where we expect a prescription as the cure for every ill. High blood pressure? Get a prescription! Too fat? Get a prescription! Child too distracted to do their homework? Get a prescription! I think this is a horrible way to live life and I personally try to avoid taking pills. At the same time, I do believe in modern science and if I have some medical condition that’s bothering me, I go and talk to my doctor.

I tell her that I’m not just looking for a prescription that will make the problem go away. I want to know how I can live a healthier life to make the problem not recur. I discuss what I can do to remedy the situation and I will take her advice and her prescriptions. I’ve found that my doctor actually appreciates this attitude since she too is tired of most of her patients’ attitude of “This bothers me, give me a pill that will make it go away.” So while I am a believer in the efficiency of modern science and medicine, I do believe many issues can be resolved with healthier living rather than pills.

Home Cures

That said, I have a difficult time with books like this that recommend methods that are completely untried and untested as cures to serious health issues. Yes, a healthy diet can make many things go away, but it’s not a magic cure to everything that ails you. There are a few simple food based treatments that do make sense to me. For example, chicken soup with its legendary curing properties is not that hard to understand. It’s a broth based meal that’s rich in nutrients but still easy to digest. For a body weakened by illness, this kind of soup is welcome relief.

Note that this means any broth based soup has the same benefits. However, the authors of this book seem to insist that it’s chicken soup specifically that has this magical property. This is my issue with most of these home remedies. Yes, some of them do indeed have some basis in fact, but most people never bother to do the research of why some of these remedies are effective and some are not. That in turn leads them to use these remedies when they shouldn’t or in the wrong way.

Ignore Science At Your Peril

Also, a lot of these home remedies lead people to believe that they can forgo the doctor. I think this is a mistake and potentially a lethal one. There’s no substitute for a regular preventative medical appointment with a qualified doctor. I don’t care how many bowls of chicken soup or cups of cherry bark tea you consume, you should still see your doctor on a regular basis.

My wife for many years battled constant migraines. I suppose she could have tried some lemon rind based cure but instead she tried the medical approach. One operation to cure a deviated septum later, plus an anti allergen medication, she’s migraine free. So while I do advocate a healthy lifestyle, I also think you should go see your doctor if you have an issue and not try to cure it yourself.

My Preferred Approach

If you’re trying to avoid pills and such that’s fine. Tell your doctor that. In many cases you’ll find them relieved to hear a patient who’s willing to take responsibility for themselves rather than try to find pills to make the problem go away. They can chat with you about changes in your life and diet that you should make. In many cases, they may even recommend certain remedies like specific foods. However, let your doctor make that recommendation, not a book written to sell copies.

Summary

Pills are not the solution to all your ills. Neither are cherry bark and chicken soup. The best solution is probably a combination of both. Just make sure your doctor is on board with your plan.


If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Oct

8

The Quick Guide to Losing Belly Fat

Filed Under Health, Motivation, Weight Loss | 2 Comments

I get a lot of questions from readers. Most tend to fall into one of several common categories. There are questions from readers concerned about how much or how little they eat. There are questions about physical exercise and how it should be done. There are also questions about general topics like nutrition. However, the question I keep getting over and over is a variation of “I have one area of my body which is fat, how do I fix this?” The area in question varies, sometimes it’s the thighs, other times it’s the rear end. Usually though, it’s the belly.

Battle of the Bulge

For those of you who have sent in questions like these, I want you to know that I understand where you’re coming from. I remember those mornings, standing in front of the mirror and staring at my gut. I remember how disheartening it was to see a side view of my body and realize how that belly bulged out. It was a terrible and constant and very visible reminder of how overweight I was. I think that’s why reducing my pants size felt like such a victory, because it had become a personal struggle between me and my fat gut. So I want you to know that I understand and I sympathize. However, there’s no such thing as a quick guide to losing belly fat.

“Send This Cottage Cheese Directly To My Thighs!”

In fact, there’s no such thing as a quick guide to losing fat from any specific area. It’s just not possible. Our bodies do not work that way. Think back over the last few years of overeating and low physical activity. Were you doing something specific to direct fat towards a specific area? When you were eating that cheesecake, were you specifically instructing your body to deposit the fat in your belly? Were you giving silent instructions to your digestion to take the fat from that triple cheeseburger and put it in your rear end? The answer is no.

Basic Biology

So if you didn’t do anything specific to make those areas fat, if they were just the byproduct of an unhealthy life, why do you think you can do something that will specifically address these areas now? Why do you think a thousand crunches will do anything? These areas are simply the places our bodies choose to deposit extra fat. That’s not a conscious choice you made, that’s your biology. Our bodies need somewhere to deposit fat. They will deposit some of it all over, but they will also deposit large reserves of it in specific areas. For men, that means a big belly. For women, it usually means more fat around the ass and thighs.

The Slow Guide to Losing Belly Fat

So no, there isn’t quick guide to losing fat from a specific area. You can do a thousand crunches and you still won’t burn away the fat from your belly. You might tone up your abdominal muscles but they’ll still be covered by fat. If you want to lose fat from your belly or your thighs or your ass or where ever it is you think you have too much of it, you’ll have to do it the slow way. That means living a healthy life, it means controlling your calories and it means being physically active. Do all of these things and the fat will slowly melt away. It will start disappearing from your entire body and you may not notice it, but you will notice it melting away from those problem areas. Because those are the areas you have the most of it and therefore the areas where the change will be most noticeable.

My first year of living healthy was filled with successes. I was able to hike Mission Peak again for the first time in six years. I was able to jog. I was able to climb the stairs to my bedroom without going out of breath. But the success that sticks with the most is putting on my old pair of jeans and noticing how loose they had gotten around the waist. Everything else was a success but this, this was a sign of victory.

Summary

There’s no quick and easy solution to belly fat. There’s no miracle cure like those TV commercials promise you for fat in your thighs. There’s just a lifetime filled with healthy habits. Get used to it.


If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Oct

3

The Wardrobe Diet

Filed Under Health, Weight Loss | Leave a Comment

Clothes, many of us pay too much attention to them and quite a few of us pay too little, but oddly enough, clothes play an important role in any health turn around. Clothes are a reason to be healthy, an indicator of progress or lack thereof and they are also an issue for many of us trying to turn our lives around.

An Indicator Of Progress

I’ve said over and over that weight alone is not a good indicator of progress when you’re trying to get healthier. You can lose weight and not be healthy. Conversely, you can gain weight and actually get healthier. The reason for this is that muscle weighs a lot. So if you gain muscle mass you might actually gain weight. This is a good thing since muscle is far healthier than fat, but it’s a bit confusing for most people who’ve learned to associate weight with health. Yes, for most people losing some weight is probably healthy, but the two are not directly related.

Even measurements like BMI (Body Mass Index) can be misleading. People with a very high or very low percentage of muscle mass can have BMI’s that are just plain wrong. This is because BMI assumes an average amount of muscle mass.  I always recommend keeping track of multiple measurements as a way of tracking your progress. You can use weight as one of those measurements, but make sure to use others as well to get a clearer picture of how you’re doing. One of those measurements is your clothes.

Clothes As Measurement

Clothes can be an excellent guide for how well you’re doing. They’re relatively standardized and measure our proportions. If I go from an XL to an L sized tshirt, I know I’ve gotten smaller. The fit of clothing can also tell me a lot about the changes in my body. For example, as I started working out, I noticed my shirts fit a very loosely around the stomach but a little tighter around the biceps. Had I just looked at weight, I might not have noticed a big change since the weight I was losing from fat was coming back as muscle.

What To Look For

  • Waist Size - Most pants are measured with a waist size. I went from a 40 size waist to a 32. That tells me quite a bit more than simple weight numbers. Just be careful with this one since different style pants fit differently.
  • For women, dress sizes are another obvious indicator
  • Shirt size- I was actually surprised when I saw that I moved from an XL tshirt to an L and surprised yet again when I suddenly found an M sized tshirt that fit me. For some reason, I didn’t think my upper body would get “smaller”.

Summary

Your clothes fit your body. This means they’re a great indicator of when your body changes. Pay attention to them because they’ll let you know what’s going on with your body.


If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Oct

1

I screwed up, now what?

Filed Under Eating Healthy, Health | Leave a Comment

Yep, we’ve all had that feeling. We screwed up, we ate that large pizza, we scarfed down an entire chicken and then we finished it all off with a whole chocolate cake. We’re bloated, we’re full, we’re stuffed and we’re guilty. It can happen with huge meals like I just described but it can also happen with little snacks. Heck, I feel guilty over a single piece of chocolate. So what do we do?

First, what not to do

  • Do not write off the whole day / week / month - I used to do this. If I made one little mistake that meant the whole day, week or month was shot. Which essentially gave me an excuse to be unhealthy for the rest of that time period. We’ve talked about this a few times already on 60 in 3. Don’t make a minor issue into a major problem.
  • Don’t take drastic measures that are bad for your health - These measures can include such things as forcing yourself to throw up or taking laxatives. If you’re doing any of these things I would recommend seeing a doctor. Eating disorders can happen to anyone and ignoring them will not make them go away.

So what can you do?

  • First, take a look at your diet. Do you even need to worry about this? I plan a little calorie margin into my daily requirements. I know I need around 3,000 calories a day but I plan to eat only 2400. So if I happen to eat a candy bar, oh well, I’m still on target. How about you? You may not have any reason to feel guilty.
  • Adjust. Did you have a bigger lunch than you really should have? Perhaps you should just have a salad for dinner. Remember, your daily calorie requirements are just that, daily. So if you messed up early in the day, fix it in the later part of the day.
  • Exercise. You don’t have to go to the gym. You can just take a walk. Walking is an excellent way of keeping your energy level high after a big meal. Take a walk around the block and you’ll feel less bloated in no time.


If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

May

31

Healthy Eating Habits, Part 4 - Stop drinking your calories

Filed Under Eating Healthy, Health, Weight Loss | 4 Comments

Thisentryis part 4 of 5 in the series SERIES - Healthy Eating Habits

We’re going through some healthy eating habits this week. Today’s topic is something we’ve already discussed in the past, liquid calories.

Liquid calories

When I first started changing my eating habits, I took a week to measure my calorie intake. I wrote down everything I ate in a little notebook. I put it all in there, from the biggest lunch to the smallest snack. I even included the vitamin supplement I was taking with its zero calories.

At the end of the week, I added everything up and calculated my average daily calories. They came out to about 3000. That’s high, but it’s not that high. For a man in his late 20’s, who is physically active and is around 5′11″, 3000 calories is going to add some fat, but it’s not going to make you obese. Yet here I was, 90lbs overweight and not losing anything.

I was a bit frustrated. Why was I overweight when clearly my diet indicated that I was doing reasonably well. So I did more research online and found an article about sodas juices and other sources of liquid calories. Turns out, I had completely ignored these. For some reason, I thought of these as water substitutes which therefore had no calories.

Simple math

So then I started writing down my liquid calories. Here’s a small sample:

  • Lunch - Glass of coke with two refills. That’s about 315 calories.
  • Afternoon - Two cans of Nestea ice tea. That’s about 180 calories.
  • Evening - One giant big gulp from 7-11 full of coke or Mountain Dew. About 400 calories.

LIST 1

Now let’s do the math. That’s 900 calories a day or 6300 calories a week. In other words, I was drinking an extra two lbs of fat every week and not even noticing it. Even worse, these are completely empty liquid calories. My body does not consider these food, so even if I fill it up with these calories, it still tells me I’m hungry. The 315 calories I drank with lunch did nothing for my satiety. I still felt as hungry as if I had drank water.

More bad choices

Coffee, fruit juices and some teas are just as bad. That mocha frappuccino you had at Starbucks this morning? It had somewhere between 200 and 300 calories and possibly as high as 500 calories. That delicious fruit juice you had at Jamba juice at lunch? Somewhere between 200 and 400 calories depending on the size you picked and possibly as high as 600 if you went with a smoothie rather than a juice. Check out these links for more information:

Jamba

Starbucks

By the way, I don’t mean to pick out these two companies. All juices and coffees are essentially the same. So don’t run out to Peet’s coffee thinking that you’re getting a healthier choice. The healthiest choice you can make is to simply avoid drinking calories.

Summary

If you’re thirsty, drink water. Water is still the best option when it comes to liquids. If you can’t stay away from nonwater drinks, at least be aware of the number of calories you’re consuming. These are calories you will need to keep in mind when you’re looking at your overall daily goals.


If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Apr

18

The office workout; be healthy and productive

Filed Under Exercise, Health, Work Out | Leave a Comment

Thisentryis part 3 of 5 in the series SERIES - How to be healthy at work

We’ve been talking about ways to stay healthy at work. We’ve covered little things like taking the stairs and how you sit. Now we’re going to talk about your workout. Yes, you can in fact workout while you’re working. And no, it’s not the kind of work out that will get you sweating. Here’s my simple workout routine for work.

Exercise 1 - Walking

Yep, walking is a workout. It’s not a very demanding one, but it’s a great way to get out of your chair for a few minutes. I try to take two 15 minute walks every day. Walking is low stress and can be done in your work clothes. Best of all, it can be combined with your work to make you more productive.

I learned this lesson from a previous boss. Each time he wanted to talk to me we would go outside and walk around the building. It’s such a simple little thing but most people don’t think about it. You can have just as good of a conversation while walking as you can while sitting in an office. It’s also a great way to network and get to know people at work. Ask them to take a walk with you. It’s good for them, good for you and good for your body. Walking alone can also be productive since it’s a great way to focus on your goals and daily tasks. Whenever I get stuck while working on a project I take a walk to consider possible alternatives and solutions.

To get the best benefit from walking, try to take one of your walk breaks immediately after lunch. That’s when you would usually go into a “food coma” as your body tries to digest food. Rather than letting your metabolism wind down, rev it up with a 15 minute walk. And yes, you can walk in the rain. Use an umbrella or just walk indoors. Most office buildings have enough space in them to give you some walking room, and in the worst case scenario, you can find an unoccupied conference room and pace a little.

Exercise 2 - 30 minutes stretches

You really shouldn’t spend more than 30 minutes being inactive. That means that every 30 minutes you should do something that gets your body moving. It doesn’t have to be strenuous, it could be as simple as stretching. You just need to get out of that chair and move. I set up a timer in my Outlook that goes off every 30 minutes. It reminds me to get off my butt and do something. Each time it goes off I spend about 30 seconds on some kind of activity and then get right back to work. I find that I have a lot more energy this way and I can stay focused and be more productive.

Here are some examples of things you can do in under 30 seconds to get your body moving.

You can look through the exrx site for more suggestions but the bottom line is, do a quick set of 10. No weights necessary.

Summary

That’s it, that’s the whole office workout right there. Get up and stretch with some kind of exercise every 30 minutes and take two 15 minute walks every day. Assuming you work a total of about 9 hours like me, that’s a total of 39 minutes out of your work day. These aren’t 39 minutes of additional break time, they’re 39 minutes of productivity. Those 30 second stretches every half hour will keep you better focused on your work. Those 15 minute walks are time to work out specific issues, think out solutions or to have a conversation with your boss, coworker or employee. So this is one office workout that can make you healthier AND more productive.


If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

← Previous Page