General Fitness

Aug

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Sports, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment

From Andrew over at MPF-

What’s a complex? Two or more exercises, back to back (choose bang-for-your-buckers, no filler isolation moves!), done back to back for a set number of reps, sometimes timed, with the same resistance–bodyweight, barbell, dumbbell, kettlebell, your dog. Then you have a timed rest period; then you repeat ad vomitissumus. If you’re using a barbell, you never put it down. If you’re using a dumbbell, you never put it down. If you’re using a kettlebell, that’s right, you never put it down. At this moment, I’m still holding the barbell, dumbbell, and kettlebell I was using this morning. Very tough.

…

This is just a form of super-sets but very effective. We do a similar workout for legs that includes-

Leg Press- 315lbs x 20 reps

Hack Squat machine- 225lbs x 20 reps

Regular Barbell Squats- 135lbs x 10 reps

One leg Bench Squats- 10 reps per leg

If you do these back to back with no rest in between for 3 supersets (or whatever you want to call them) you will walk out of the gym (maybe) with your legs shaking and your stomach ready to throw up. Just try it.

Aug

Effects of Even Brief Overeating Hard to Overcome

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Sports, Supplements, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment

This is a very interesting study- It basically shows that overeating and lack of exercise have long term effects even after people clean up their diet and resume exercising. Psychologically, it becomes easier to see why many people seem to struggle with permanent weight loss. In the US where practically everyone overeats significantly, you can see what a problem this creates. I suspect that once people get used to overeating, it is very hard for them to ever return to a diet that actually allows them to lose all the weight they have gained.

The article doesn’t say what kind of exercise the people engaged in but my experience is that high intensity resistance weight training does exactly the opposite of what this experiment showed and physiologically changes a persons metabolism.

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The effects of a sedentary, gluttonous lifestyle are hard to shake, even after the person has become an upstanding, healthy individual, a new Swedish study suggests.

Researchers found that even a short period of overeating and a lack of exercise can have lasting effects on a person’s physiology and make it harder to lose weight and keep it off.

Eighteen healthy people of normal weight were given the arduous task of limiting their physical activity (to no more than 5,000 steps a day) and increasing their food intake for four weeks. The participants in this so-called intervention group ate 70 percent more food, for a total of about 5,753 calories a day, over the study period.

However, one year after the study period, those individuals still had more body fat than they did at the study’s start.

Aug

5 Salads that are worse than a Whopper

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Seniors/fit, Sports, Supplements, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment

Good Salad

Salad sounds so healthy… but really, it all depends on what is on the salad. If it is lettuce, bacon and ranch dressing, you might as well get the Whopper. Pretty much any creamy dressing is going to be extremely high in fat and sodium- and BTW, no one uses one serving of dressing on a salad. Most people use 3 or 4 servings. The general rule of thumb is that if it is creamy, it is because it is made from fat. This just shows how important it is to check the nutritional info on the restaurants website because their marketing dept has been working overtime to convince people that their offerings are healthy. So, with that in mind, here is the worst salad you can buy at a chain restaurant in America-

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T.G.I. Friday’s Santa Fe Chopped Salad
1,800 calories
Calorie equivalent: Burger King Double Whopper, Medium Fries and Small Chocolate Shake (1,800 calories)

This is the worst salad in America. T.G.I. Friday’s doesn’t reveal full nutritional information, so we don’t know how much salt or fat this monstrous dish packs. Here’s a hint: Never, ever order a Mexican-themed salad, no matter where you’re eating. As in this case, they’re usually huge dishes of heavy burrito toppings on a bed of lettuce leaves. The only salad you’re safe to order at Friday’s is the Cobb.

Check out the other “bad salads” here-

Aug

Would you like Lipitor with your burger?

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Spiritual/Emotional, Sports, Supplements, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment

Giant Burger...

Here is a crazy concept… hand out free anti-cholesterol statin drugs with high fat fast foods. I guess the idea is that since you won’t get people to quit eating unhealthy food, you might as well give them the magic pill to partially counteract the effects. At that point, why don’t they just mix it into the hamburgers. The idea of encouraging people to eat unhealthy foods by lowering the risk with drugs just seems crazy to me. If you have to take a drug to keep something you eat from killing you, it seems like common sense would tell you not to eat it. But as the saying goes- “common sense is not all that common”. From MSNBC-

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Fast food outlets should hand out free cholesterol-lowering statin drugs to their customers to “neutralize” the heart risks of eating fatty foods like burgers and fries, British scientists suggested on Thursday.

But a few experts say you might want to ask your server to hold the statin at this point.

In a study published in the American Journal of Cardiology, scientists from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London calculated that the reduction in heart disease risk offered by a statin could offset the increase in risk from eating a cheeseburger and a milkshake.

“Statins don’t cut out all of the unhealthy effects of a burger and fries. It’s better to avoid fatty food altogether. But we’ve worked out that in terms of your likelihood of having a heart attack, taking a statin can reduce your risk to more or less the same degree as a fast food meal increases it,” said Dr. Darrel Francis, who led the research team.

…”Although no substitute for systematic lifestyle improvements, including healthy diet, regular exercise, weight loss, and smoking cessation, complimentary statin packets would add, at little cost, one positive choice to a panoply of negative ones,” the scientists write in their paper.

Jul

Natural Cures for Depression, Insomnia and others

It is well know that many of our modern ailments are self-inflicted and caused by the high stress culture we live in. Add in poor diet and lack of exercise and you have the perfect storm. But many of those symptoms can be alleviated with natural remedies.

Take for instance depression. New studies show that massage therapy is equally effective as anti-depressants at relieving symptoms. There is little doubt that acupuncture is a very effective way to treat certain types of chronic pain without taking drugs. Green tea and cocoa are both excellent helping with arthritis and hypertension.

You can read the whole article over at MSNBC-

Jul

Nutritional Value of Fruits and Vegetables is Declining

Carrots

Studies have shown that the push to grow fruits and vegetables faster and bigger has resulted in a large decline in their nutritional value. I think you also notice it in the taste. Naturally grown products are much higher in vitamins, minerals and all of the other beneficial elements. So look for a farmers market where things are locally grown. That doesn’t guarantee they are natural, but they are probably better than the stuff that is shipped in from hundreds of miles away that weren’t even ripe when picked. Best idea yet… plant your own garden and take control of what fertilizers and pesticides are used. You can read the whole article here-

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It’s happening to crops in the United States, too. In 2004, Donald Davis, PhD, a former researcher with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, Austin, led a team that analyzed 43 fruits and vegetables from 1950 to 1999 and reported reductions in vitamins, minerals, and protein. Using USDA data, he found that broccoli, for example, had 130 mg of calcium in 1950. Today, that number is only 48 mg. What’s going on? Davis believes it’s due to the farming industry’s desire to grow bigger vegetables faster. The very things that speed growth — selective breeding and synthetic fertilizers — decrease produce’s ability to synthesize nutrients or absorb them from the soil.

…Bigger isn’t better, so skip the huge tomatoes and giant peppers. “Plants have a finite amount of nutrients they can pass on to their fruit, so if the produce is smaller, then its level of nutrients will be more concentrated,” says Davis.

Seek out heirloom varieties like Brandywine tomatoes, Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage, Golden Bantam corn, or Jenny Lind melon. Plants that were bred prior to World War II are naturally hardier because they were established — and thrived — before the development of modern fertilizers and pesticides.

Jun

Engineered Foods

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Sports, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment

This is a really good video clip that helps us understand just exactly what goes into the development of new food products. That bag of chips has been tested, tweaked and re-tested so that you will like it and buy it- but as you know, what we like is not always good for us. That is how business works- for good or bad. The reality is that the business is so competitive that billions of dollars are spent every year to determine exactly what you like and what you will buy. This is usually not good because most people like fat, sugar and salt. Reading the labels and eating fresh whole foods can go a long way towards healthy eating. So, buyer beware…

Clip from MSNBC-

Jun

Foods that help prevent skin cancer and sun damage

Grilled fish

There is a good article by SELF magazine over at MSNBC which lists several foods that have natural anti-cancer and sun damaging compounds. They list them by meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and give a variety of choices that help the body fight of the damage from the sun’s rays. But basically, the secret is anti-oxidants which are found in fruits and vegetables and Omega 3’s which are most abundant in fish. So, eating a diet that is heavy in fruits, vegetables and fish can have a very positive effect on your body. But you already knew that didn’t you?

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A Mediterranean diet that includes fish packed with inflammation-fighting omega-3 fatty acids — as well as citrus, fresh herbs and veggies rife with polyphenols — may slash your melanoma risk in half, the International Journal of Epidemiology reports. These compounds scour the body for potentially cancerous cells and help reverse some DNA defects early on.

Jun

Teenage boys can really eat!

Posted by: Curt | Under: General Fitness | Add Comment

Most people know this from experience, but a new study confirms that teenage boys can really pack it away. Given the chance to eat as much as they wanted for lunch, they averaged about 2000 calories. That is the recommended intake for a whole day for older adults. I do wonder if there are other variables such as whether they ate breakfast that morning and how much exercise they got. Still, 2000 calories is a lot of food at one sitting. But then again, I remember my teenage years and even as a skinny 135 lb boy, I could eat huge quantities. The authors did note that boys that are overweight should cut back on their diet since bad eating habits generally follow us into adulthood and it is very obvious that we have a severe weight problem in our culture.

So if you have boys, let them eat as long as they are not overweight but try to guide their eating habits as much as you can since a diet of fast food will come back to haunt them…

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But in a lunch-buffet experiment involving 204 kids ages 8 to 17, researchers found boys routinely ate more compared than girls their own age and boys in their mid-teens were the most ravenous — downing an average of nearly 2,000 lunch calories.

Researcher Dr. Jack A. Yanovski said the pattern made sense, given that boys usually hit their growth spurt — putting on height and muscle mass — in late puberty.

“There’s a lot of folk wisdom that says boys can eat prodigious amounts, but we haven’t had much data,” Yanovski told Reuters Health as his study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajcn.2010.29383v1).

Jun

Calcium Intake is Crucial to Good Health

Got Calcium?

A study done in Sweden shows that Calcium is a very important mineral for many things- not just strong bones. Making sure you get enough calcium is really pretty easy. All foods list calcium on the nutrition label so you just keep track for a few days as you eat. If you are not getting enough, adjust your diet to include more calcium rich foods. Of course, the best natural source is dairy products but if you have problems with diary, you can always take a supplement. But I would try to stick to natural sources if possible since they are generally absorbed better by your body.

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Swedish researchers found that men who consumed the most calcium in food were 25 percent less likely to die over the next decade than their peers who took in the least calcium from food. None of the men took calcium supplements.

The top calcium consumers had a 25 percent lower risk of dying from any cause and a 23 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease during follow-up relative to men that had the least amount of calcium in their diet. Calcium intake didn’t significantly influence the risk of dying from cancer.

Men in the top third based on their calcium intake were getting nearly 2,000 milligrams a day, on average, compared to about 1,000 milligrams for men in the bottom third. The US Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for calcium intake is 1,000 milligrams for men 19 to 50 years old and 1,200 milligrams for men 50 and over.

Calcium could influence mortality risk in many ways, they note, for example by reducing blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar levels. For the men in the study, the main sources of calcium in the diet were milk and milk products and cereal products.

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