You are here: Home / Archives for Research

Is Tracking Calories and Workouts Useful?

January 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I’ve been pondering an app called Lose It! for the past few weeks. I’ve talked about it before and I think it’s an incredible tool for those who are looking to make a change. It can really help you identify what you’re eating, how much you’re exercising and where the difference is between where you are and where you want to be. However, is it something I, or anyone else, should use for the rest of their life? At what point does tracking numbers like this stop being beneficial and start being stressful? Is it worth it to pause in the middle of a wonderful dinner with my wife just to enter in the fact that I ate a burrito?

I would quantify the usefulness of Lose It! and other apps like it in three ways:

  • It’s helpful in learning more about your habits and really digging into the details of where your problems are
  • It forces you to face your issues by making your overeating or lack of exercise really obvious
  • It motivates you to keep working at your goals by presenting you with reports and daily reminders

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Motivation, Research, Tools Tagged With: , , ,

More Charts! This Time, Workout and Weight By Age

April 19, 2011 By 2 Comments

Last week I charted by weight by age and came up with some interesting thoughts on what really influences health.  Based on that conversation, I thought I would add in additional information in the form of my workout results.

I am representing average workout performance in two ways.  First by showing you how far I would run in an hour.  That’s the bar marked speed and the lowest point on it is 4 while the highest is 6.5 miles.  The second is by showing average weight in my bench press set.  That’s the blue bar with the lowest being 45 and the highest being 275.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Eating Healthy, Editorial, Research, Time Management Tagged With: , , , , , ,

New Exercise Guidelines From the US Government

October 24, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The US Department of Health and Human Services recently released its new guidelines for physical activity, and I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss them.  I’m going to review their summary since the actual guidelines are hundreds of pages.  However, If anyone is interested, I’m going to include links to both the summary and the full guidelines at the end of this post.

The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans provide comprehensive science-based guidance on physical activity for Americans. Inspired by President Bush’s personal dedication to physical fitness and his desire that every American have access to science-based guidelines, HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt appointed a 13-member Physical Activity Guideline Advisory Committee to review and analyze current scientific literature. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans published by HHS are based on the 683-page report submitted by the advisory committee.

Ok, so far so good.  This is definitely a good start, although I find it amusing that the report was 683 pages.

The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans are designed so that people can customize them to suit their lifestyle and include activities they enjoy. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans contain examples of activities for different age groups and those with special considerations. A shorter companion guide, Be Active Your Way, helps adults develop a customized plan to suit their lifestyle and physical activity goals.

Hey, this is good so far.  I love the fact that they get it.  Every person is different and what we need and like may not be the same.  So it’s good that these exercise guidelines are customizable per person.  In fact, if you read the in depth guides, you’ll see a lot of suggestions on how to customize them to suit your needs.

Health benefits of physical activity occur for children and adolescents, young and middle-aged adults, older adults, and those in every studied racial and ethnic group.

Wow, now I’m really impressed.  This is a point that needs to be made over and over.  EVERYONE can benefit from physical exercise.  It’s not just for young adults, men or whatever group you think belongs in a gym.  Physical activity is for everyone.

Regular physical activity improves health for young and old and reduces the risk of disease. With regular physical activity, children and adolescents improve their cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness and bone health, and reduce symptoms of depression. Adults and older adults lower the risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, colon and breast cancer and can help prevent falls and reduce depression. Older adults also enjoy better thinking ability with regular physical activity. Regular physical activity also helps people with arthritis or other rheumatic conditions affecting the joints by improving pain management, function, and quality of life.

Again, very well said.  Too many people see physical activity as just a way to look good and tone up their butt.  Guess what, there’s a lot more to it.  Regular activity helps with everything from chronic conditions like arthritis to cancer prevention and better mental capacity.

Some physical activity is better than none; the more physically active you are, the more benefits you reap. For most health outcomes, additional benefits occur as the amount of physical activity increases through higher intensity, greater frequency, and/or longer duration.

Can it be?  An actual government press release which makes sense and doesn’t contain too much spin?  Again, this statement is spot on.  Even a little physical activity is better than none.  So even if you can’t meet all the minimums, it’s still beneficial to do something.

Children and adolescents should participate in one hour or more of physical activity per day; and most of the activity should be moderate or vigorous aerobic physical activity. They should participate in vigorous physical activity at least three days a week. They should participate in muscle-strengthening activities, such as push-ups and sit-ups and playing tug-of-war, three days a week. They should incorporate bone-strengthening activities, such as jumping rope, hopping or running, at least three days a week.

Don’t be fooled, kids can get most if not all of this exercise in a couple of hours on the playground.  So there’s really no need to send a child to the gym if they’re getting plenty of time to play outdoors with other kids.  However, I do like the fact that the summary gives a bit of information on how much and what types of exercise kids should do.  The detailed guides contain even more useful information.

Adults gain substantial health benefits from two and one half hours a week of moderate aerobic physical activity or an hour and 15 minutes of vigorous physical activity. Aerobic activity, such as walking briskly, water aerobics, ballroom dancing, jogging, and jumping rope, should be performed in episodes of at least 10 minutes. Increasing aerobic physical activity to five hours a week of moderate activity or two and one half hours a week of vigorous aerobic physical activity, results in more extensive health benefits. Adults should do muscle-strengthening activities, such as weight training, push-ups, sit-ups, carrying heavy loads and heavy gardening, at least two days a week.

This is great.  Again, whoever wrote this should be immediately promoted to write all other government documentation.  It’s brief but contains enough information to be useful.  It’s also very accurate.  I like how it recommends both brisk (cardio) activities as well as muscle strengthening exercises.  This is something many people ignore, usually focusing too much on either cardio or weights.

Older adults generally should follow the guidelines for adults. If chronic conditions limit their ability to do two and one half hours a week of moderate aerobic activity, they should be as physically active as their abilities and conditions allow.

Yep, this is good advice again.  It doesn’t matter how old you are, the guidelines still apply to you.  Too many older folks are stuck in the mindset that they are too old for the gym or too old for weight or too old for cardio.  That’s dead wrong.  You’re never too old.

Be safe as well as active. Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans include tips for safe physical activity. Some examples are choosing activities appropriate for current fitness level and health goals; increasing physical activity gradually over time to meet guidelines or health goals; and using appropriate gear and sports equipment and looking for safe environments.

and hey, let’s finish things up with a bit of good safety advice.  If you want more details on this you’re going to need to read the full guides, which contain a lot of useful safety information.

Summary

This is a one page summary of the new health guidelines.  In fact, it’s pretty much a press release.  However, I am amazed by how useful and accurate it is.  This is what all government press releases should be like.

Here’s the link to the summary

CLICK HERE

And here’s the link to the actual guides

CLICK HERE

###

I’m a pretty cynical person when it comes to our government, but I have to say that these guidelines are well written and very useful.  If you have the time, take a look through them.  Even I found a lot of useful advice in there and I think they’re even more useful for people just now starting out with exercise.

Filed Under: Exercise, Research

What’s A Calorie?

July 23, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Sometimes, after living something for years, you forget that you once were a beginner who knew virtually nothing.  That happened to me yesterday when I saw an email from a reader.  The email had a very basic question in it which was “what is this thing we call a calorie?”  My first thought was, “oh wow, how could anyone not know this.”  Then I remembered that not too long ago, I didn’t know this myself.  So my apologies to the sender of this email and my thanks to her for allowing me to post the response.

What Is A Calorie?

A calorie is a unit of measurement, like a yard, meter, gram or gallon.  More specifically, it’s a unit of measurement for energy.  So if yards and meters measure length and gallons measure volume, a calorie measures energy.  Even more specific, a calorie is the amount of energy required to heat 1g of water by one degree celsius.  By the way, that’s a very broad definition right there, since the amount of energy required to heat up water varies by air pressure, water purity and a few other factors.  However, for our purposes, stating that a calorie is the amount of energy required to heat up one gram of water by one degree celsius is close enough.

Wow, I Must Be Burning Thousands Of Calories Just Standing Here!

When I first learned this I did a quick calculation in my head.  Let’s see, I weight about 100 kilo grams which is about 100,000 grams.  My body temperature is about 37 degrees Celsius.  So if I just stand outside on a cold day I’d be burning thousands of calories an hour as my body raced to keep me warm, right?  Yah, not so much.  Unfortunately, in an attempt to confuse you even more, a calorie used for food is actually 1,000 of the original calories.  So a food calorie is actually the amount of energy required to heat up 1 kilo gram of water by 1 degree Celsius.  For your non metric folks out there, that means a food calorie is the amount of energy required to heat up 2.2lbs by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

So now when I look at the energy requirements to keep my body warm, they don’t sound so high.  They’re measured in the 100′s and not in the 1000′s.  Plus my body doesn’t lose enery very quickly since I don’t typically go outdoors on a cold day wearing no clothes, which also reduces the energy requirements.

By the way, our bodies don’t use calories just to keep warm, that’s just one way in which this energy could be used.  For example, moving a part of the body also uses up energy, which can be measured in calories.  That’s why a lot of gym equipment can show you how many calories you’ve used up in your current workout.  It’s basically figuring out how much energy you’ve spent and then translating it into this standard unit of measurement.

So How Do We Get Calories From Food?

So if the previous section explained how we used calories, then how the heck do we get calories out of food?  Well, that’s a more complicated explanation involving a lot of chemistry and biology.  I’m sure that some scientist out there is going to cry when he reads my amazingly simplified explanation but hey, I’m not trying to teach biology here.  Essentially, the bottom of the food chain are plants, who take energy that they absorb from the sun and store it as chains of carbon molecules.  As animals eat plants and we eat both plants and animals, these carbon chains are broken down to release the energy stored there by the plant.  If we can’t use the energy right away, we store the energy in various forms, one of them being fat and another being various sugars.  That’s why foods that contain sugars and fats are so high in calories, because we’re basically eating something else’s energy storage.

It’s Good To Know What A Calorie Is

By understand calories and what they represent, a lot of things about fitness and health make more sense.  For example:

  • Now it makes sense why turning the thermostat down a bit in our homes would help us burn more calories.  The room temprature is lower which means our bodies have to spend more calories trying to keep us warm.
  • Negative calorie foods also make sense.  It’s not that these foods somehow grab calories and go hide them somewhere.  Negative energy foods like celery still have some calories in them, it’s just that the energy required to chew and digest them is more than the energy we get out of them.

You can even use this knowledge to understand a few more things about your body.  For example:

  • Why do we sweat?  Well, because your body is trying to keep cool.  So it puts out moisture.  The body then uses up extra heat energy to evaporate this moisture, causing your to be cooler.  (and yes, that’s a very simplified explanation of perspiration).

###

Fitness is part art and part science.  The science part tells us the basic facts.  The art part is how we apply those facts to our daily routines.  The art is important, but it’s also important to educate yourself about the science underlying all this art.

Filed Under: Nutrition, Research

Review: Omnivore’s Dilemma

July 16, 2008 By 4 Comments

i’ve talked about Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma before, but since I recently reread it, I thought I would officially review it here on 60 in 3.

What Is This Book All About?

The Omnivore’s Dilemma is a book about food.  It’s not a diet book, it’s not a nutrition book and it’s not a healthy eating book.  It is simply a book about food, where it comes from and how it gets to our table.  The book seeks to make you aware of what you’re eating and why it’s on your plate.

What Is The Omnivore’s Dilemma

First off, what the heck is the title supposed to mean?  The omnivore’s dilemma deals with an issue faced by all creatures who can eat a variety of foods.  Simply put, faced with many choices, we’re left wondering which is the best one.  That’s not a problem faced by creatures with a simpler diet.  For example, the Koala, which can only eat Eucalyptus leaves, rarely wakes up in the morning thinking “what should I eat today?”  Carnivores, who eat only meat, usually don’t have a problem picking out a proper dinner dish.  It’s us omnivores who need to make decisions each time we eat.  For humans, that’s especially bad since we’re faced with an incredible variety of foods, many of them bad for us.

What’s In The Book?

The book is divided into three sections, each of which follows a different food chain from raw materials to consumption of a meal.  The first section looks at industrialized food and how it goes from corn field to finished product.  The second section follows the “organic” food chain from farm to plate.  Finally, the third section looks at a meal completely foraged and collected by the author, with all components being personally obtained.  Each section includes a lot of information on why this food chain exists, how it came into being, what the various issues or problems with it are and what kind of impact this food chain has on the world around us.

The book is very personal by the way.  It is not scientific nor is it cut and dry.  In each section the author digs in and really gets involved with the food chain he’s examining.  Whether it is by working on a corn farm in section one, slaughtering a chicken in section two or going foraging for mushrooms in section three, Pollan gets up and close and personal with his food in every possible way.  That’s part of what makes this book so great, it takes a process which is often impersonal and alien and puts it into terms that are meaningful and easy to understand.  It makes us relate to our food, which I think is an incredibly valuable endeavor.

Section 1 – The industrial food chain

Pollan starts this section at the most logical point, the corn field.  Corn is the foundation on which the American industrial food chain is built and Pollan follows it from the field where it is grown and harvested to the place where it is most commonly served, the American fast food restaurant, McDonald’s in this case.  Pollan includes quite a bit of history on how corn came to dominate the American culinary landscape and what the impact has been on our wallets and waistlines.  Along the way, he visits a factory beef farm to show a bit about modern meat production.  It’s clear that Pollan is not really fond of this food production chain and he makes a very good case for how it hurts us in a variety of ways.  If you’re not angry at your government by the end of this section, you may want to go back and reread it :)

Section 2 – The “organic” food chain

Here Pollan follows organic food from field to plate.  I put organic in quotes because Pollan makes a point of saying that the term organic is a bit loose.  It can refer to a gorgeous little family farm in the middle of the woods or it can refer to a very industrial facotry that’s almost like the processed food chain he examined in section 1.  Again, Pollan presents a lot of background material on how this organic food chain came to exist and how various parts of it function.

Section 3 – The foraged meal

This final section was the least practical but also the most interesting.  Here, Pollan talks about a meal he foraged himself.  He grew the vegetables, he foraged the mushrooms and yes, he hunted the meat, specifically, wild California pig.  Pollan gets philosophical in some areas of this section, talking about animal rights and the morality of being a carnivore.  By the way, Pollan himself is not vegetarian, nor does he advocate it as a lifestyle, he’s just discussing the topic as yet another thing to consider when you eat.

Of all three sections, I enjoyed this one the most.  Sure, it probably didn’t have a lot of information I’m going to use in the future, but it really made me think about my food, which is the point of the book.  This is the most personal of the food chains, one in which you are the entire food chain and nothing stands between you and your food.  What you gather is what you eat.

So Why Is This Book Important?

Because we’ve forgotten what food means.  Too many of us see food and but don’t actually see everything’s that’s gone into that food.  We’ve forgotten or never knew how that food got to us.  We don’t think about all the work and effort that went into making the food and getting it to us.  We don’t think about the impact of our decisions and we fail to consider how a simple choice like what to have for dinner can have wide reaching consequences on the world around us.

Food is 50% of health (the other 50% being exercise).  Something this important shouldn’t be ignored.  We focus too much about nutrition and calories but we’re never really aware of what food is and where it came from.  We think of the differences between meat and vegetables but we don’t really think of the difference between this tomato and that one.  We worry about the amount of carbon our cars put out but we don’t think about the resources it took to put that steak on our plate.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma doesn’t try to get you to go vegetarian, it doesn’t tell you to start growing your own vegetables and it doesn’t preach about proper nutrition, it just wants you to be aware of what you’re eating.  The books seeks to make eating a conscious decision rather than a mindless activity and I think it’s a spectacular success.  After reading this book I can no longer walk into a McDonald’s without thinking about corn.  I can no longer look at a package that says organic without questioning the meaning of the word.  I don’t even think of hunters the same way I did before and, for the first time in my life, I have a real desire to learn how to cook.  In all possible ways, Michael Pollan’s book has made me more aware of what’s on my plate, which to me is the whole point.

If you’re interested in your health then you should be interested in your food, and if you’re interested in learning more about your food, then this book is a must read.

###

There are very few books that have affected me as much as this one.  If you’re interested, here’s the link to Amazon.  Buy it online, check it out from the library, find it at your nearest used book store or borrow it from a friend.  Whatever you do, go and read this book.

Amazon link:

Filed Under: Eating Healthy, Research, Review

How To Measure Your Heart Rate

May 2, 2008 By 21 Comments

A week or so ago I mentioned that you should be measuring more than just your weight. One of the measures I mentioned was resting heart rate. Well, I got a couple of emails from people asking how to measure heart rates and what do the measurements mean.

Please note that all of the numbers mentioned below are averages. They vary by age, weight, gender and a number of other factors. Please don’t try to apply these numbers to yourself without consulting with a doctor. They are intended only as a guideline, not absolute recommendation.

How To

Let’s begin with how to. There are a variety of places you can measure heart rate but the easiest I found is along the wrist. Place both your hands palms up in front of you. Now take one of your hands and place the index and middle finger of that hand on the outside of the wrist of the opposite hand. The fingers should lie together on the opposite wrist about 1/2 inch on the inside of the joint, in line with the index finger.

Picture

Feel for a pulse. When you find a pulse, count the number of beats in a ten second section of time and then multiply by 6. If you want to be more accurate, count heart beats for 15 seconds and multiply by 4, count for 30 seconds and multiply by 2 or count for 60 seconds. The more time you count for, the more accurate your measure.

Resting Heartrate

For resting heart rate, you should measure in the morning, a minute or two after you wake up. Don’t measure your heart rate if you just woke up from some horrible nightmare or especially exciting dream. Those tend to elevate heart rate and will make for an inaccurate measure. Try to measure on three or four separate days and then average the number for more accuracy.

Normal resting heart rate is about 60 to 80 beats per minute. It will be lower for people who are in good shape and it increases as you age.

Maximum Heart Rate

Maximum heart rate is the level above which your heart is in danger. You really shouldn’t cause your heart to go up this high. Maximum heart rate is roughly calculated as 220 minus age. There are more accurate formulas out there but this one will do for now. Note that maximum heart rate doesn’t really change except with age. It does not go up if you’re in shape. However, people who are in shape can take a lot more physical strain before their heart is pumping this hard. For example, a person who is in shape can run for miles and never even come close to this number while someone who is badly out of shape may be close to their maximum heart rate after climbing one flight of stairs. For most exercise, you should aim for 60 to 80% of your maximum heart rate.

So for me, being 34 years old, my maximum heart rate 220 – 34 or 186. My target heart rate for exercise is between 111 and 149 beats per minute. If it goes a bit over 149 that’s probably ok but I shouldn’t be close or over 186 for a sustained period of time.

Recovery Rate

Recovery rate is another important factor when it comes to heart rate. It measures how quickly your heart rate goes back to normal after exercise. To measure it, simply check your heart rate right after your peak exercise point. Now rest for two minutes and measure your heart rate again. The more in shape you are, the quicker your heart rate will return to normal.

So I measure my heart rate at my peak exercise point and find it to be about 140. Now I wait two minutes and measure my heart rate again. This time I find a heart rate of about 100. I subtract 100 from 140 and divide by 2 to come up with a recovery rate of 20 beats per minute. If your recovery rate is below 12 beats per minute, then you’re in trouble. It means your heart doesn’t recover very well from the stress you put on it.

###

Heart rate is one of the most important measures of health and fitness that we have. It’s relatively easy to measure at home and is a far better indicator of progress and general well being than weight. Go ahead and give it a try, and don’t forget to consult with your doctor during your yearly physical.

Filed Under: Fitness, Research

Do You Know What’s In Your Food?

April 28, 2008 By 2 Comments

There’s a new poll out from the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The poll asked 500 people about the calorie contents of their food. Care to guess the result? If you guessed that most people don’t know what’s in their food, you’d be right. You can find the article on the CSPI site here.

Don’t Eat What You Don’t Know

I don’t go to restaurants unless I know what I’m eating.  For local restaurants, that means asking them what they put in their food and how they prepare it.  For chain restaurants, it means not eating there unless they publish their nutritional content on their premises.  On premises means right there where you eat the food, not on the website.  Website nutritional info is great mostly for regretting what you just ate and doesn’t really help you make an informed decision when you order.

Let Your Voice Be Heard

If there’s a restaurant that does not publish nutriotional information then tell them you won’t be eating there anymore and then tell them why.  Enough of these opinions will make a difference.

Make Your Vote Count

I’m not a fan of big government.  I don’t think government should tell us what to do or how to behave.  I do however believe that governments have a role to play in making sure we have enough information to make an informed decision.  So I support government efforts to force restaurants to display nutritional information.  Let you congress man or woman know that you’d appreciate this sort of information and that your health is more important than lobbyist dollars.

Read Those Labels

Once you have the information, don’t forget to use it.  Information is useless if it’s not used.  Read it and then base your food decision on it.  If enough of us make healthy food choices, maybe restaurants will offer more healthy options.

###

I know people who will spend hours researching the best shampoo for their pet or the best school for their kids.  Why not spend a little of that time researching what you’re eating?  The results may surprise you.

Filed Under: Eating Healthy, Nutrition, Research
« Older Posts