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Step 2 – What Does Healthy Eating Mean?

September 6, 2010 By 6 Comments


Healthy eating!

Originally uploaded by atache

So, you’ve written down your goals and you’ve checked out your toolkit. What now? What do we do to get started down the path towards better health?

The first and most important item for people trying to get healthy is to improve your eating habits. Don’t get me wrong, exercise is also an important component, but healthy eating is the best and easiest thing you can do for yourself. Let me illustrate this with a simple example. Let’s say that you, like most people, have a weight loss goal. In order to achieve this goal, you need to lose 300 calories per day. That’s actually a pretty modest goal by the way.

In order to achieve this goal through exercise you would need to do one of the following:

  • Walk for about an hour
  • Run for 30 minutes or more
  • Lift weights for 45 minutes
  • Play a strenuous sport like soccer for 40 minutes
  • Bike for 45 minutes

Now these numbers will obviously vary by how hard / fast you do these activities and also by variables such as your body weight, but in general they’re good averages. By comparison, here’s what you would need to do to lose weight through healthier eating.

  • Forgo one latte per day
  • Go from a large fries to a small fries
  • Order a diet coke instead of a coke
  • One small bag less of chips

Compare these two things. Would you rather eat the small fries or would you pack your gym bag, head to the gym and run for 30 minutes?   Think about the time you would need to spend to work off those calories as opposed to simply drinking water instead of that latte. Honestly, I’m a huge believer in exercise but even I have to admit that losing weight through eating healthier is much much MUCH easier.

No Fad Diets!

That said, you don’t want to drastically reduce your calorie intake for a short amount of time as most diets would have you do. Those kinds of crash diets actually do more damage than good. You’ll end up slowing your metabolism and then regaining all the weight once you get off the diet. You also don’t want to try and follow one of those complicated diet regimes that has you looking at a spreadsheet each time you want to figure out what you can and cannot eat for lunch. Diets like these are doomed to fail because, unless you’re extremely rich and have your own dietitian and chef on staff, no one can keep up with all the rules and restrictions they include.
So, rather than telling you to eat nothing but one apple a day or asking you to look up everything by its exponential glycemic index minus effective carb load plus double the slow protein minus the square root of the Atkins index or eat nothing but cabbage soup, here are the basic rules to healthy eating. I’ve tried to make them as easy to understand and follow as possible.

  • Eat slow – When you eat fast you end up eating too much. Eat slow, enjoy your food and stop eating when you feel full.  A great way to do this is by making meals social.  Go enjoy your meal with someone else and have a great discussion while you eat.  You’ll find yourself full before you eat too much and enjoying your food a lot more than when you used to scarf those cheeseburgers down while alone in your car.
  • Eat mostly vegetables – If you’re looking at your plate, it should be ½ water rich vegetables like spinach, lettuce, sprouts, totatoes, cucumbers and so on, ¼ calorie rich vegetables like peas and corn and ¼ some kind of lean protein like turkey, chicken or fish. The corollary to this rule by the way is “stop eating so much red meat.” I love a good burger as much as the next guy but we eat way too much of it to be healthy. Same applies to pork. In general, heavy meats like these should be eaten once a week and no more.
  • The stone age rule – If you showed what you’re about to eat to a human being from the stone age and his first response was “what the hell is this?”, then you shouldn’t be eating it. In other words, if it doesn’t look like natural food then it doesn’t belong in your mouth. That means Twinkies, breakfast cereal, Oreos, deep fried beer and anything else that looks nothing like anything you would find in nature.
  • Drink water – It’s unbelievable how many calories we ingest and don’t even consider as good. According to some of the latest research, sodas, coffees and other drinks now account for more than 14% of an adult’s calorie intake, and it’s even worse for kids. That’s just crazy! Drink water, it’s good for you.

That’s it. Four simple rules to live by, or at least eat by. If you can start incorporate these simple rules into your eating habits, you’re going to be eating healthier in no time.

Filed Under: Diets, Eating Healthy, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , ,

How Far Are You Willing To Go?

July 6, 2009 By 4 Comments

It amazes me sometimes how far people are willing to go to be thin.  I hear it all the time.

  • Crazy diets which involve ridiculous eating plans
  • Insane exercise plans which are clearly unsustainable
  • Popping pills which either do nothing or artificially change your metabolism
  • Smoking cigarettes (Yes, I actually know someone who doesn’t want to quit smoking because she’s afraid she’ll gain weight).
  • Surgery
    • Liposuction, a procedure where they literally poke a hole in you and then vacuum out fatty tissues
    • Stomach stapling, a procedure which restricts your eating

And now, here’s a new article from Forbes.com showing two new ways in which our wonderful diet industry is going to help you in years to come.  First we have:

researchers inserted a molecular shunt into the liver cells of 94 mice

That sounds promising, doesn’t it?  Luckily, the researcher adds,

Still, genetic engineering has not yet been used to successfully treat people, so any anti-obesity treatments using molecular shunts are years away, Liao said.

And next we have:

researchers added leptin receptors to a particular type of neuron (pro-opiomelanocortin neurons) in the hypothalamus of the mice’s brains

Really?  Is this the future of weight loss?  Genetic engineering and brain modification?  I’m sorry, I know we all want the easy answer, we all want that magic bullet that will make us thin and healthy without any of the effort.  A pill or a treatment that will enable us to eat all the ice cream we want while still having six pack abs.  I know, I understand, I want it too.  Unfortunately, the best, safest and healthiest ways to lose weight and stay fit are still:

  • Eat healthy
  • Eat in moderation
  • Be physically active

No need for pills, surgery, genetic engineering or brain surgery.  Just those three things.  It’s a secret that everyone knows but refuses to admit.  Eat less junk food, eat more veggies, move around more.  Nothing else is needed.  No, it won’t work in 3 days and no it won’t work without a bit of effort and sacrifice on your part, but it will make you healthy without the associated risks of the procedures described above.

So if you’re thinking about any of the procedures above, do me a favor.  Try to do the following three things first.  Try them for just a month and see how you feel.

  1. Find something in your eating habits that you can cut out.  It could be the double latte in the morning or the late evening candy bar.  Whatever it is, identify something unhealthy and cut it out completely.
  2. Add one serving of vegetables to your diet.  Healthy vegetables, like tomatoes, spinach, cucumbers, peppers and so on.  Eat them raw if possible.
  3. Commit to 30 minutes of walking a day.  No excuses, no canceling on account of rain.  Just get out there and walk.

Make it your very own 30 day challenge.  If you can do this then you can lose the weight in a natural and healthy way.  Sure, it may take a bit longer than stomach stapling but at least you won’t have to go through surgery!  And if you can’t do this for 30 days, then I apologize but you don’t need stomach surgery or genetic engineering, you need a life change and a motivation boost.  I just hope you get it before it gets you.

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If you’re interested, here’s the article.  Also, note the ending:

“Until we get a very clear understanding of the way that all of these compounds work together, we need to accept the fact that diet and exercise is the only well-proven, safe, side effect-free approach to weight and glucose control,” Weiss said.”

Filed Under: Editorial, Motivation, Weight Loss

One Day At A Time

May 25, 2009 By 5 Comments

NOTE – Our body image series will continue on Friday.

In 2003, I started eating healthy and exercising.  I saw improvement really fast.  I dropped weight and I felt a lot better.  I went from 280lbs to 220 in about 3 years, hence the name 60 in 3.  I also added a lot of muscle mass and improved all the numbers by which health is measured.  Then I hit a plataue.  Although I wanted to get to 180lbs, I found myself running up against the problem of my eating.  For a variety of reasons, my eating habits reverted back to some of the old bad habits.

It wasn’t quite as bad as the days of large pizzas and a gallon of coke for dinner, but it wasn’t good either, and I’ve been strugglin for years to figure out a way to break these habits yet again.  I kept having small successes and then I would relapse back to binge eating.  I go a week and do really well but then I would ruin it all in a weekend of overeating.  It was frustrating and I thought I would never reach my goal weight.

Lately though, I’m seeing a nice amount of progress.  I’m getting the binge eating under control and the candy / caffeine habits are slowly being broken.  I wanted to share with you what’s been working and what hasn’t.

What Hasn’t Worked

Guilt - I should have known this one wouldn’t have worked but guilt is a hard habit to break.  Guilting myself into eating less never works, it just makes me feel bad.  Neither does beating myself up afterward.

Daily Weigh Ins – I thought measuring my weight every day would give me incentive to keep going.  It didn’t.  It just made me feel bad about the overeating from yesterday.

What Has Worked

Eliminating Temptation At Home – I no longer buy cookies and chocolates and so on for the house.  I always told myself I would eat them in moderation but that never really happened.

Getting More Sleep – It’s true, lack of sleep leads to overeating.  Ever since I started focusing on a better night’s sleep, I’ve found myself eating less.

Cutting Out The Caffeine – This could be related to the better sleep thing, but cutting out caffeine seems to have made me less prone to cravings.  My metabolism is more steady rather than peaking and crashing every two hours.

Support - Thanks to a special someone who’s making me walk the walk and not just talk the talk, I’m eating more healthy meals at home.

One Day At A Time – I told myself I wanted to eat healthy for just one day and then I ate unhealthy the next day.  Then I ate healthy for two days and then went back to unhealthy for a day.  Each time, I extended the number of days I was eating healthy by just a little bit more.  These days I’m eating healthy for an entire week and then giving myself a pass on Saturdays.  It’s been working really well.

Motivation

And of course, I needed to find the motivation to make this change.  I think I was stuck in this rut where I couldn’t see the benefit of losing more weight.  It wasn’t as clear to me what these additional 40lbs would do for me whereas the first 60 had a very clear benefit.  These days I have a goal in mind.  I want to sleep better and I think losing the weight will help me with that.  I also have a goal of having a noticeable 6pack by next summer.  Sound shallow?  Maybe so, and there’s a part of me which wonders how this connects back to the topic of body image which has been on my mind for the past few weeks.

Am I going for too much weightloss?  Am I giving in to some manufactured ideal of what a man should look like?  I don’t know the answer to that but I do know that I intend to lose this weight slowly, gradually and in a healthy manner.  I’m not going on any crash diets, I’m just going to continue eating healthy and work out.  We’ll see where my equilibrium weight eventually settles and at that point I’ll decide if more changes are warranted.

I also want to make my weight goals and progress public again.  I stopped that last year when I was going through a rough personal patch and needed to focus on other things.  From now on, it’s back to the monthly updates which will hopefully be full of good news :)

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Hope everyone is having a good day.  As for me, it’s time to go to sleep!

Filed Under: Monthly Update, Motivation, Weight Loss

The Problems With Body Image

May 22, 2009 By 3 Comments
This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series Body image

Over the next few weeks on 60 in 3, I’m going to write a series of articles about body image, what it means, how important it is, the kind of problems it can lead to if badly handled and my own struggles with it.  I wanted to start out this series with the following video:

It’s from the Dove evolution campaign and it’s a bit old (2006) but I think it makes an amazing point.  What we see today as the “ideal” body image is nothing but a manufactured illusion.  Take a look at this video and see the transformation this woman undergoes.

Some of this transformation was done through makeup, some through technology.  Either way, she is made into something that is impossible for her to achieve on her own.  This is a model, someone picked for beauty, and yet even she must be artificially transformed into something she could never be.  This is what we’re sold every day.  This is what our children see every evening.  This is what we’re told we should look like.  Women get more of this than men, but men get enough of it too.  One look at some recent action movies (300 anyone?) and we can easily see that men too are bombarded with artificially enhanced images of the “ideal” male physique that they must aspire to but can never achieve.

I’ve always said that looking good is a perfectly fine goal to use as motivation for being healthy.  However, like many things, this can be taken to an extreme which is both unhealthy and unrealistic.  That’s what I’d like to talk to you about in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, check out that video.

Filed Under: Editorial, Illness and Injury, Motivation, Weight Loss Tagged With: , ,

The Basic Equation of Life

April 27, 2009 By 2 Comments

I often get questions along the lines of “will this make me thin?” or “what do you think of this diet?” which make me believe that most folks don’t understand the basic mechanisms of our body.  So I decided to devote today’s post to a review of the underlying equation of life and weight.  Here it is folks, the theory of relativity for weight loss.

Calories In – Calories Out = Change In Weight.

If calories in are higher than calories out, you get a positive change in weight (you gain weight).  If calories in are lower than calories out, you get a negative change in weight (you lose weight).  That’s it, the basic equation.

A Bit More Detail

To understand how various things work, I’m going to expand the equation a bit into the following:

(Calories In * Digestive Efficiency) – (Metabolic Calories Out + Activity Calories Out) = Change in weight.

What does all this mean?

Calories In – This is an easy one.  Calories in are what you consume.  Eat a 300 calories candy bar and you’ve consumed 300 calories in.

Digestive Efficiency – Not exactly a scientific term but a good one nonetheless.  This basically represents how many calories your body actually derives from those calories in.  For example, some people are unable to digest certain foods.  So they may consume 100 calories worth of that food but their bodies don’t really get the full 100 calories worth.  For anyone thinking this is a good thing, spend some time with people who are lactose intolerant, they’ll set you straight.

Metabolic Calories Out – Your body uses a certain amount of calories per day just to stay alive.  Basic living activities such as breathing, pumping blood and maintaining temperature all require calories.  This is what goes under Metabolic Calories Out.

Activity Calorie Out – These are the calories you use on activities other than basic bodily functions.  For example, walking, running, lifting weights, dancing, hiking, having sex.  All of these activities require energy and that energy expenditure falls under activity calorie out.

So What?

So, now that we have our equation and our terms, what does this all mean?  Well, the basic lesson here is that anytime someone tells you about something that could help you lose weight, you want to make sure you understand how it’s going to affect your body.  That’s why it’s important to know this equation.

For Example:

Exercise - Well, that’s an easy one.  We exercise which means we increase Activity Calories Out.

Eat More Vegetables – This one is a little less obvious.  Vegetables are relatively low in calories.  So if we eat the same volume of food but make more of that volume vegetables, we’ll eat less calories overall.  That means less Calories In.  Note that “eat more vegetables” isn’t really the secret.  It’s “Eat Vegetables Instead Of Other Food With More Calories”.  If you ate everything you did today and then just added vegetables, you’d actually gain weight since you increased Calories In.  That’s the power of this little formula.  Once you understand, you can make sense of a lot of these diet and health tips.

Eat More Frequent Meals – Why?  Well, the theory is that our bodies spend calories more freely when they get food frequently.  Our bodies will behave like people who get 10 dollars every day instead of 300 dollars at the end of the month and they’ll be more willing to spend that 10 dollars right now.  Note that this only affects metabolic calories out.  That is, by eating more frequent but smaller meals, our Metabolic Calories Out increase.

Calorie Restrictive Diets – These are the diets that tell you to cut down your calories in drastically.  Sounds simple enough, lower calories in and you lose weight, right?  Maybe, but what other parts of the equation could these diets affect?  Well, as our bodies receive less calories, they also try to spend less calories.  Bodies do this by lowering the amount of calories spent on basic life sustaining activities.  For example, stay on a calorie restricted diet long enough and your body will shut off things like reproductive systems.  It will also start cannibalizing calorie rich tissue like muscles.  In other words, your body will compensate for the drastic decrease in Calories In by reducing Metabolic Calories Out.

Bad Ideas

As a general rule, there are a few bad things you can do:

Changes in digestive efficiency – This includes taking laxatives, forcing yourself to throw up and so on.  Most of these fall into the realm of eating disorders and if you’re doing them, please seek help.  As someone who’s struggled with healthy eating for many years, I can understand your pain, but this isn’t the way to solve the problem.

Artificial changes in your metabolic calories out – This includes things like smoking, most diet pills and other stimulants.  Sure, they cause you to burn more calories but at what cost?  Most of these things put a tremendous burden on your body and can cause many other health issues.

Drastic changes in calories in – Things like 500 calorie a day diets or week long fasts.  These aren’t healthy for you and, in the long run, they are not conducive to weight loss.  You’re just going to ruin your body by doing these.

Luckily, there are some good things you can focus on:

Increase in activity calories out – This is easy.  Move more.  Go out.  Walk, exercise, dance, swim.  Whatever it is, just keep moving.

Natural increases in metabolic calories out – This includes things like eating more frequent meals, lowering the thermostat at home (forcing your body to spend a few more calories on the proper temperature), building muscles (muscle tissue uses up a lot of calories) and so on.  There are a variety of ways in which you can tell your body “speed it up!” that are natural and good for you.

Gradual and healthy changes in calories in – For example, removing sodas and coffee from the menu.  Your body won’t notice the removal of most liquid calories so you can do this without sending your body into panic mode.  Also, doing things like replacing high calorie foods with low calorie foods like vegetables is good.  Your body will get the same volume of food but less calories overall.  That means your body still believes it’s getting a good amount of food and so it won’t start enacting emergency measures.

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Just remember that basic equation and try to figure out how various behaviors fit within it.  It will make you a smarter and more educated consumer of health activities.

Also, this was a VERY short and unscientific primer about the human metabolism.  People should educate themselves about their bodies in more detail than this.  It’s just as important as learning about your mortgage rate or how your car works.  In fact, it’s probably a lot more important than either one of those.  If you’re interested, I highly recommend YOU: The Owner’s Manual, Updated and Expanded Edition: An Insider’s Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger

Filed Under: Reader Q&A, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , , ,

Guest Post: Walling The Scale, by Roy Cohen of Emerge Fit

April 22, 2009 By 4 Comments

Today’s post is a guest article from Roy Cohen.  You can read more about Roy over at his site, Emerge Fitness.

Walling The Scales – (an unscientific study)

I speak often of how much I hate the scale for it’s cunning ability to deceive, discourage, and demoralize those who don’t use it correctly. The scale is the true serpent of fitness temptation.

The scale, like weaponry can be a great and powerful tool when used correctly. Also like weaponry, it can penetrate the fitness psyche with such force and abrasive consequences that a would be fitness success story never realizes her or his potential for the damage that is done to the inner fitness self .

I only recently purchased a scale for my studio, and at the request of a good friend and client. I have lived without a scale for the past 6 years because knowing my bodyweight or that of my clients has not been my concern. I can see my abs, I can still wear the same jeans I wore in high school, and I can run faster than my kid – why should my bodyweight matter? Still, the scale can be an effective tool when used correctly so I heeded my friend’s request and made the purchase.

Despite the presence of a scale in my studio, I have asked no student to step on it but one. It gathers dust in the corner and lives a lonely unused scale life — poor thing. I’m okay with that though. Again like weaponry, a forgotten scale is like a forgotten land mine — watch where you step.

With regard to accuracy, it’s a good scale I suppose – I paid nearly $200 for it, so it should be accurate. It’s nice too, my little scale. Aesthetically pleasing – lots of chrome, and an almost 1940s art-deco look to it, though it is digital. Chrome, and circular, the scale caught my eye quite a bit in the beginning. Still, I resisted the temptation to step upon it – I need not know.

After 6 months of passing it by and never being tempted, the metaphoric snake got the better of me, and I took a bite of the chrome apple in my studio – and several weeks ago I gave in to scale temptation; 172 lbs. I thought nothing of it because the last time I had been on a scale nearly a year earlier, I was 172 lbs. See? No need for a scale.

Well, a couple of days had passed and wouldn’t you know, I decided to step on my scale again to confirm my 172 lbs. – oops, 176lbs. Wow, whatta fat tub lard I am, huh? Four pounds in two days? It was on. Since I could think of no significant departures from my systematic eating behavior, a little more cardio would be in order until 172 lbs. was back in my command. I made no eating changes at all, simply wanted to get back to my 172 lb. home by burning extra calories.

Three days later I stepped on the little pedestal of temptation once again, and boom, 169 lbs. Wow again, a little extra cardio served me very well it seemed. Seven pounds down in three days? Very cool, this meant I could eat more to get back to my beloved 172. Carne asada burrito with extra guac, here I come!

And there I went, 175 lbs. Came and went for three or four days in this fashion; more food/less food, more cardio/less cardio, more bodyweight/less bodyweight. Then it hit me and I realized I was caught in the deadly rip-current of scale ebb and flow. To reason my way out of this, and support my commitment to a non-scale way of life for me and my students, yesterday I chose to weigh myself 5 times. Here we go:

6:00am: 171 — 10:00am: 174 — 2:00pm: 173 — 5:00pm: 176 — 9:00pm: 173

In a day, I gained and lost a total of 10 lbs.

Fluids mostly, and digesting foods. Sweat lost from hard cardio = weight lost. Forty-four ounce cup of coffee twice = weight gained. Food in/food released = pounds gained/pounds released. For these reasons, I will always suggest that should you choose to use a scale in your weight loss effort, weigh yourself no more than every 3-4 weeks. Allow enough time between weigh-ins to demonstrate real weight loss – separate and distinct from the 10 pounds which can be gained and lost in a single day.

My experience yesterday, above all other reasons is why I recognize how deceiving the scale can be. This is simply to serve as a non-scientific reminder that even an educated and disciplined fitness enthusiast can fall victim to the scale.

When it comes to the scale, it’s not what’s on the scale display which matters most, it’s who’s standing on the scale — and what they did to ensure improvement. Be well, and be well and clear of the scale.

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Gal’s Note – I completely agree with Roy.  As a little experiment, I have been weighing myself every day for the past few weeks and the information I have seen is pretty much useless.  Weigh in once a month if you must but daily weigh ins do nothing except mislead and demotivate.

Filed Under: Guest Post, Motivation, Weight Loss Tagged With: , ,

The Seven Deadly Sins of Personal Fitness

March 25, 2009 By 3 Comments

Forgive me for the dramatic title, I rewatched Se7en last night.  A very dark and depressing movie, but also a very good one.

However, here they are in no specific order, the seven worst things you can do to yourself when you’re trying to be healthy.

Gluttony

Gluttony is an obvious one, you eat too much.  However, as obvious as it is, it’s still the number 1 problem for most people struggling with their health.  How can this possibly be?  It’s not rocket science after all.  You can figure out how many calories you need to eat per day and you can find out how many calories you’re eating.  If the second number is higher than the first, you’re eating too much.  It’s that simple.

Little tricks to avoid gluttony:

  • Drink water – Sodas, coffee and juices are a big source of uncounted calories.  That is, calories you are consuming but forget to include in your calculations.
  • Eat vegetables – Your body is concerned with volume.  That is, it wants a certain amount of food per day and it measures this amount in terms of the space it fills, not the calories it has.  Vegetables fill a lot of space with very little calories.  So eat more of them and you’ll feel full without packing in the calories.
  • Avoid restaurants – Make or buy your own food so that you know what’s in it.  That’s a good way to avoid all the hidden fat that restaurants will sometimes pack into their food to make it taste better.

Greed

Ahh yes, greed.  I want it all and I want it now.  Guess what, there are no quick solutions to health and fitness, no matter how much money you have to spend.  Liposuction won’t make you healthy and buying that new $2000 home gym won’t either.  Being healthy can be done with no money but it does require a lot of time.  In fact, it requires a life long commitment to living a healthy life.

Tips to avoid greed:

  • Reasonable time frame for losing weight is 1 to 2lbs per week.  Any program that promises you more is either unhealthy or lying to you.
  • The best gym equipment you can get is a pair of comfortable running / walking shoes and those shouldn’t cost you more than $50 or $60.  If you’re paying more for gear, you’re wasting money.

Sloth

Another obvious one.  If you spend your days sitting on the couch doing nothing, you’re not leading a healthy lifestyle.  Again, this is a no brainer and yet it’s the number 2 problem for most people, right behind gluttony.  Again, it’s fairly simple folks.  Our bodies evolved in a lifestyle that demanded movement.  We walked, hunted and sometimes ran for our lives.  You don’t need to go out and hunt any mammoths but you should get off your ever expanding butt once in a while.

Tips for avoiding sloth:

  • Walk often.  Walking is amazing exercise and you should do it as often as you can.  Walk to the store, walk to work, walk for fun.  Walk for 30 minutes or more EVERY DAY.
  • Watching TV is probably the worst possible use for your time.  It dulls your brain and ruins your body.  Unless you’re watching PBS while doing jumping jacks and push ups, you should think about turning that idiot tube off and finding something better to do with your time.
  • Workout.  Your muscles need a challenge.  They were designed for hunting, you’re using them for typing.  Go find something heavy and lift it multiple times.
  • Have fun.  The best workouts are the ones you don’t consider a workout.  Find a hobby that includes a lot of movement and do it often.  That new hobby could be dancing, hiking, biking or horse back riding.  Whatever it is, enjoy it.

Lust

Ooooh, my favorite.   Actually, lust isn’t really a sin when it comes to fitness.  Sex can be a great exercise, especially if you get a bit energetic about it.  For those of you who can achieve this “workout routine”, 20 minutes of wild sex, three times a day is a great way to get your daily exercise!

Tips for lust:

  • err… I’m going to stay quiet on this one.  If you really need sex tips, I’m pretty sure you can find them on the internet somewhere… :)

Vanity

Vanity is both good and bad when it comes to fitness.  Yes, it feels good to look good and being fit can certainly help in the looks department.  In that respect, a little vanity is a good thing because it’s great motivation.  However, vanity can also be a bad thing when we focus too much on our looks and stop thinking about our health.  That’s because modern culture has given us an image of what is beautiful that is not very healthy.  Stick thin models are considered the ideal, which is doing horrible things to our body image and self confidence.

Tips for avoiding the pitfalls of vanity:

  • Avoid the magazines.  The pictures they show are unhealthy, not to mention frequently photoshopped.  Want to see a healthy ideal?  Go see dancers perform or go to an amateur sporting event.  Those folks are healthy and they look great.
  • If you start adopting unhealthy habits in the name of your looks, please see a professional.  If you’re starving yourself, purging after meal or any other kind of destructive behavior, please seek help.  I am not an expert but as someone who has struggled with some body image issues, I hope you get better and I wish you the very best.
  • Keep in mind that low weight does NOT equal good health.  If you’re focusing on weight alone, you’re not focusing on being healthy.

Envy

Ahh envy, my old friend.  We always want what we don’t have and that can be a good thing sometimes, if it’s used as motivation.  For example, when I first started out reshaping my life, I was very envious of those who were in great shape.  Then I realized that being fit was something I could accomplish on my own.  That’s the interesting thing about fitness and health.  Sure, you may not be an Olympic athlete, but you can be really healthy if you try.  You don’t need to be envious of those who are fit, you just need to use them as an example.

Tips for the envy crowd:

  • If you’re curious about how someone got so fit, ask them.  Believe me, most gym goers would be flattered if you ask them for advice.
  • Remember, fitness isn’t something you buy with money.  That’s a good thing because it means that, with enough time, you can be fit too.   No need to be jealous :)
  • Find a partner to workout with.  Misery may love company but so does success.

Wrath

And finally wrath, my best friend.  Wrath in fitness is less about anger and more about frustration.  You get on the scale and somehow you’ve gained weight instead of lost it.  You walk in the gym and you’re out of breath within seconds.  You work hard but your blood pressure is still too high.  It’s all so frustrating and you’re tempted to just give up and stop trying.  I know, I’ve been there.

Relax, don’t get frustrated and remember the following things:

  • Your body didn’t get the way it did in a week nor can you fix it in a day.  It took years to get where you are and it might take years to get better.  Relax and enjoy the journey.  As long as you’re making good progress, you’re ok.
  • Again, find a partner.  It’s a great way of reducing the frustration level.
  • Try a boxing workout.  Nothing better to get out some anger out than punching a bag for an hour.
  • Find something you enjoy.  The best workout isn’t the one designed for maximum muscle gain, it’s the one you like and will keep doing.  Sure, a workout needs to physically challenge you but it should also be enjoyable or else you’re not going to do it.

Summary

Well, it took some doing but I think I’ve taken a bit of biblical trivia, combined it with an excellent movie and twisted it into a fitness article.  What can I say, I’m an artist! :)

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On Friday, I’ll do the seven cardinal virtues!

Filed Under: Eating Healthy, Exercise, Healthy Habits, Motivation, Weight Loss
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