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“Eat Less, Move More” Is No Longer Accurate

November 14, 2011 By 4 Comments

Healthy LifestyleI used to believe that anyone who wanted to lose weight and get healthier needed only to “eat less, move more.”  In other words, just stop eating as much calories as you are right now and start exercising and you’ll see some great results.  My experiments over the past few months have revealed to me a slight (or maybe not so slight) error in my thinking.   [Read more...]

Filed Under: Eating Healthy, Exercise, Fitness, Healthy Habits Tagged With: , , , ,

What A Wonderful Sunday

August 8, 2011 By 1 Comment

Golden Sunday

  • Woke up at 7am, took the dog for a 30 minute walk.
  • Got back and napped for a 30 or so minutes on the couch.
  • Julie woke up and we took another walk with the dog.
  • At 9:30, she went off with her mom to get various items for our upcoming wedding and I stayed and worked on the house.
  • I got a lot of gardening done, cleaned up the shed, worked on the garage and found a bit of time to play with the dog.
  • Also made myself a nice breakfast of organic bacon and tomatoes.
  • When Julie and her mom came back, I made lunch with some fresh chicken and a greek style salad (olives, tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce tossed in a bit of of olive oil and feta cheese) for us to eat while we worked on the seating arrangement for the wedding.
  • In the evening, Julie and I did some more work on the house, then took a two hour hike in the hills.
  • To finish it off, I cooked dinner out of some turkey sausages and a fresh green salad.

I feel tired but great.  We walked so much today and I also got in some physical activity through the gardening and house work.  I feel full but not stuffed which tells me the amount of food was perfect.  All in all, an amazing day. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Eating Healthy, Fitness, Healthy Habits, Walking Tagged With: , , , , , ,

How To Start A Healthy New Life

October 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Start LineSo now that we’ve gone over the whole healthy life pyramid, where do we go?  Even for those of us who are relatively healthy, what’s the next step?  How do we get from the here of not so healthy to the there of being healthy?

There are two answers to this:

Big Bang Theory – No, this isn’t just a sitcom about nerds.  The big bang theory essentially says that you turn your whole way of living upside down in one day.  You commit to a radically different life and go after it 100% from day one.  You’re going to start exercising, eat healthier and be more active starting and all of it will start TODAY!

  • Advantage – Making this sort of radical life change is probably going to generate results very swiftly.  You’ll see significant weight loss within the first week and improvements in your health within a month.
  • Disadvantage – You’re probably going to fail.  Sorry, but big bang efforts rarely succeed.  Honestly, how many of your new years resolutions have you kept?  And yet, even with this track record of failures, you expect to succeed on a totally different lifestyle?

The Gradual Theory – Take it easy.  Implement small changes, one or two at a time.  Stick with these changes until they become a habit and then move on the next change.

  • Advantage – Much higher chances of success.  This method is what worked for me and I think it’s the best one out there.  For the record, the “60 in 3″ in my blog title refers to the fact that I lost 60lbs over 3 years.  Yes, THREE YEARS.  Sound like a lot?  How about the fact that I kept all of that weight off, I’m still healthy, I just ran a marathon and I’m incredibly healthy?  How many people have stayed that successful with their health efforts seven years later?
  • Disadvantage – Results are slow and, if you’re impatient like me, you don’t want slow results.  You want low blood pressure, fast running speed, the sexual stamina of a horse and the figure of a Greek god all within 2 weeks.  Well, you’re welcome to try the big bang theory if you want, but this being my blog, I’m going to recommend the gradual approach.

So, What To Focus On?

If you’re just now starting on the gradual approach, I would recommend picking 1 or 2 of the following suggestions and then trying to stick with it for 30 days.  See if it works for you over that period of time.  If it does, stick with it and pick up another little habit.  That’s all you need to do over the first 2 to 3 months, make little changes that together will add up to a lot.  Remember that the specific item you pick depends on your own lifestyle.  For example, if you currently don’t drink a lot of soda then picking the item that says “no drinking soda” is pretty silly, don’t you think?

  • A 30 minute walk every day – No skipping days, got to do this EVERY SINGLE DAY
  • No fast food – No going to any restaurant where you order at the counter.
  • Eliminate your liquid calories – If you have a soda habit, switch to the diet version.  If you like your lattes, try them with no sugar or switch to black coffee.
  • Eliminate meat from your diet twice a week – Spend two days a week with no meat.
  • Eliminate dinner twice a week – Yes, go without having a large dinner two days per week.
  • Eliminate candy and other sweets six days a week – Pick your candy day and make it the only day of the week that you can have sweets on.
  • Get better sleep – Try to get at least 8 hours of sleep on 5 days a week.
  • No junk food – If it’s stuff that comes in a plastic bag with pretty colors on the outside, how about you not eat it 6 days out of the week?
  • Go on a bike ride – A least three rides per week for at least an hour each.
  • Try a hike – Once per week, try going somewhere with a few hills and walk up and down them for at least an hour.

Any of these habits is a great start towards a healthy life.  Just keep in mind that these are not an excuse to do worse in other parts of your life.  For example, just because you didn’t eat meat today doesn’t mean you can eat a whole bag of Lindt chocolate truffles.  The point here is not to do something good which is outweighed by something bad.  The point is to keep the rest of your life the same while slowly improving one specific aspect.

So there you have it, pick one of these and get started!

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By the way, for those of you who are already living a relatively healthy life, this approach works just as well.  Figure out a small change and implement it.  Make it a habit and then move on to the next small thing.  As for me, this month I’m working on improving my running speed.

Filed Under: Eating Healthy, Exercise, Healthy Habits Tagged With: , , , ,

What’s In Your Fitness Toolkit?

August 30, 2010 By 1 Comment

Last week I came back to fitness blogging with a note about goals. I asked you all to write down your fitness goals, regardless of if they’re “fit back into my bikini” or “lower my cholesterol”. These goals needed to be:

  • Specific – A vague goal like “be healthier”, “run more” or “eat less” is meaningless.
  • Measurable – A goal you can’t measure is a goal you can’t work towards. For example “lose weight” is meaningless but “lose 20lbs by Xmas” is good
  • Realistic – If you have a bad back, you probably won’t be doing deadlifts next month. Similarly, if you are severely overweight, you’re not going to be slim by next week. Goals need to be realistic or you’re just setting yourself up for failure.

I emphasize these things because these goals are not just things to dream about.  These goals are actually tools for us to use.  We will fine tune these goals, create plans based on them and use them as our motivation.  As such, they are the first tool in our fitness tool kit.

Common Goals

Now, most health related goals usually fall into the following categories:

  • Lose weight – This could be stated as a simple weight goal or it could be something like “lose 3 inches from my waist”. Either way, you want to get rid of some extra fat. This is actually not the best of goals since weight loss isn’t always the healthiest of ideals but hey, it’s better than nothing.
  • Improve health – This one is usually stated as “lower cholesterol”, “lower blood pressure” or “ability to go up the stairs in my house without being out of breath”. All of these are good goals since better health is a great thing to strive for.
  • Performance goals – “run a mile in under 10 minutes”, “bench press 200lbs” or “run a marathon”. These are all standard ways of setting some kind of achievement based goal.

The goals for improving health are usually the best since they’re all encompassing but the other ones aren’t bad either. Actually, the best way to go about getting fit is to have multiple goals, preferably some from each category.  So if you have time, go back and try to come up with a goal or two from each of these categories.

Now let’s look at the tools we’ll be using.

  • Move more – This doesn’t necessarily mean exercise. It just means getting a more active lifestyle. We’ll examine this in more detail in follow up posts but for the moment, think of this as walking up the stairs instead of taking the elevator.
  • Resistance exercise – This one usually means things like pushups, lifting weights and so on. Basically, this is a workout for your muscles and bones.
  • Cardio exercise – If resistance exercise is for your muscles and bones then cardio exercise is for your heart. This one includes things like running, swimming and biking.
  • Eating healthier – This means both eating less and eating better. Yes, you will need to give up some of those cheeseburgers and replace a few of those lattes with water.

This is 90% of our basic tool kit.  From each one of these categories we will draw specific items that will help us achieve our goals.

The Last 10%

One last thing, I am not in the business of selling magic solutions that will make you thin and healthy in 3 weeks and allow you to go back to your old ways afterwards.  If you want to get fit with me then you will need to commit to making lifelong changes. You must be willing to commit to exercising, being active and eating healthier FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. Think about that one for a second because it’s a big one. I will suggest a variety of ideas to you in the next few weeks and you need to decide if you want to adopt them as a part of your life. I urge you to try them out before ruling them out, but I also urge you to take this seriously. If you want a healthier life you need a healthier way of living life. No temporary diets, short term exercise plans and month long eating programs. If you’re not willing to commit to a life long change, you may as well stop reading now because you’ll be wasting your time.  That’s the last 10% of our tool kit, a resolve to change our lives in permanent ways.  Sounds so simple but without this 10% you’re pretty much doomed to fail in the long run.

Now, if you’re ready to make some changes, tune in next week when we start talking about some ways of adding activity to your life.

By the way, here’s my own list of goals:

  • Run the Maui Marathon in September in under 6 hours.
  • Get to 180lbs by February of 2011
  • Do a set of 10 bench presses with 300lbs by January of 2011
  • Try out (at least 10 classes) a martial art of some kind by June of next year
  • Completely eliminate soft drinks from my diet by October of 2010 (for long time readers of 60 in 3, you know how I’ve struggled with getting rid of my diet coke habit).
  • Have my doctor tell me she’s amazed with how healthy I am when I take my next physical in February of 2011.  (Ok, so this one isn’t very specific but it’s good for the ego and that’s not a bad thing)

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