Excerpt
Part One: Committing to a Healthy Lifestyle
Getting to where you want to go in life is a process. It takes time, commitment, and a series of accomplishments - some big, some small, but each important. Change is a progression, and each bit of progress you make gives you confidence to take on the next challenge. In Get With the Program! I introduced readers to several important behaviors that would powerfully alter their physical and emotional well-being. In case you missed Get With the Program, I'll quickly go over four of the most crucial of those behaviors in order to bring you up to date. If you read the previous book, this will serve as an excellent refresher course and help you stay on or get back on track.
Among these behaviors are two different types of exercise: aerobic workouts and strength training. You might wonder what exercise is doing in a guide to good eating, but I strongly believe that you can't separate the two. If you want to achieve wellness and weight loss, you have to do both: eat well and exercise. So why am I discussing exercise first? Because exercise can provide you with a powerful incentive to eat well. When you exercise, you really feel it if you're not properly fueled - it's hard to keep your energy up. Knowing that good nutrition will give you the strength and stamina you need to perform your workouts properly is going to make you want to eat well. You'll become much more conscious of what you're consuming. And exercise keeps your metabolism revved up, helping to counteract the metabolic slowdown that naturally occurs when you start cutting calories.
Exercise is an important part of the foundation upon which to build healthy eating habits. But another important - in fact, absolutely essential - component is your attitude. Your level of motivation and the way you think about your prospects of success are key. Just by reading this far, you're moving in the direction of change, but before you go any further it's time for an "attitude check."
Attitude Check
- Reaching a certain size or weight won't necessarily make me happy. Not unless you identify and deal with any underlying problems that have made weight an issue in your life.
- There are no shortcuts to achieving what I want. Dedication, commitment, and effort are needed to accomplish anything worthwhile.
- Excuses ("I don't have time," "I'm too tired to exercise," "I've already blown it today, I'll start again tomorrow") just won't wash. If you're ready to change, you're ready to stop making excuses.
- Each improvement I make, not just pounds lost, is worth acknowledging and praising myself for. Feeling better, sleeping better, feeling stronger, being less stressed, looking healthier - focus on these aspects of improvement, and you will keep your motivation up.
- Setbacks are going to happen. Setbacks are a natural and inevitable part of any progression and are no reason to throw in the towel. If you can overcome setbacks and reach your goals in spite of them, you have shown true strength of character. Ultimately, your sense of accomplishment will be that much greater.
- Losing weight takes willpower. As much as some people (those selling gimmicks under the guise "Weight Loss Made Easy") would like you to believe that you don't have to give up anything to slim down, the truth is that you do. Your commitment to your health and well-being will require some small sacrifices, but the return on your investment will be large.
- Physical activity is nonnegotiable. You have to move to improve.
- I can love my family and friends and be a good employee and still take care of myself. Get those close to you to support your program, and from this point on, consider your health and well-being sacred. Don't let your obligations to others interfere with your obligations to yourself.
If any of these statements makes you feel unsure about whether you can truly make a commitment to yourself right now, I recommend that you consider holding off until you feel ready to handle the challenge. And you will eventually feel ready - but you need to do it within your own time frame. If you do feel prepared for the challenges to come, keep reading. Some of what lies ahead may be tough, but it will be very rewarding.
Maximizing Your Metabolism
Let's talk about your metabolism. You're going to be hearing a lot about metabolism throughout this book, because the rate at which you burn calories (that's the definition of metabolism) is critical to maintaining a healthy weight. And increasing your metabolic rate is critical to losing weight permanently. Everybody burns calories at his or her own individual rate; if you've always had a sluggish metabolism, you'll probably never get it to run at the same speed as that skinny girl's from high school (who turned up at the class reunion twenty years later looking just as skinny). But you can maximize your metabolism's potential so that it burns at its highest rate for the largest number of hours per day.
One thing we know about metabolism is that it changes throughout the day; it is slowest when you're sleeping (even though you're asleep, you still must burn calories to maintain your body's basic functions, such as breathing, heartbeat, and digestion). We also know that certain things you do can give your metabolism a boost. Eating is one of them. Exercise is another (although exercise raises your calorie-burning rate much more than eating). As soon as you begin exercising - whether doing aerobic exercise or strength training - your metabolism increases, and it continues to increase in direct proportion to the length and intensity of your workout. Best of all, the boost your metabolism gets from exercise can last for hours after you've stepped off the treadmill or put down the weights. But the really good news is that you can increase your metabolism 24 hours a day, 365 days a year with consistent exercise. This is how dramatic weight loss occurs.
In the pages that follow, you'll learn a lot more specifics about your metabolism and how you can change it. You already know that burning calories through exercise and eating fewer calories will help you lose weight. But metabolism is another and entirely separate piece of the puzzle. Boosting yours is the first order of business. Let's identify the four behaviors that make up the foundation of good eating and that will keep your metabolism running efficiently.
1. Staying Hydrated
GOAL: Start drinking a minimum of 6 eight-ounce glasses of water a day, and work up to 9.
Since water has no calories, most people think it doesn't have anything to do with weight loss. But it does, and it's essential for good health. When you're dehydrated, your body's ability to perform virtually every physiological function, including the important process of fat metabolism, decreases. Dehydration can make your body go in search of water, signaling you to eat more, a phenomenon I call "artificial hunger." Dehydration also causes your digestive system to work at a diminished capacity, potentially preventing you from getting the nutrients you need and triggering unnecessary eating to make up for the shortfall. On the other hand, if you drink adequate amounts of water throughout the day, it'll not only keep all systems functioning smoothly, it'll fill you up, helping to curb your appetite so you eat relatively less, not more.
It's especially important to be hydrated when you exercise; your body can't cool itself adequately when it's low on fluid. What's more, being adequately hydrated during exercise will help you stay energized so that you can maintain an appropriate intensity and not quit early, and end up burning fewer calories both during and after your exercise session.
If you can work up to drinking nine eight-ounce glasses of water a day, great. But at the very least, try to get up to eight glasses - you'll need at least that much if you're moderately active. (When you exercise more and at a higher intensity, you may need even more.)
Most people drink only when they're thirsty, but by the time you feel thirsty, your body may be already dehydrated. Drink water throughout the day, and don't consume too much at once: drinking more than one to two glasses at one sitting stimulates the body to rid itself of the water.
Your water requirement is over and above the water you get from foods such as soup and other beverages. What counts as water? Fresh, noncarbonated water. Carbonated (or sparkling) water, which can have somewhat of a diuretic effect, doesn't count. Neither do drinks that contain caffeine or alcohol, for the same reason. Remember, active people need more fluids than people who don't exercise, and pure water is your best source.
How to Work More Water into Your Day
- Start the day with a glass of water. Drink another glass before you work out, then two afterwards. Have another one a half hour before lunch, then one at lunch, and you'll already have had six glasses by midday.
- Buy a water filter for your home. Filtering makes your water taste better. It's also safer than drinking unfiltered water and cheaper than buying bottled water.
- Carry a bottle of water with you at all times. You don't have to buy bottled water to do this; just use a refillable sports bottle.
- Any time you see a water fountain, stop and take a few sips. Every little bit helps!
2. Working Out Aerobically
GOAL: Perform aerobic exercise for a minimum of 50 to 150 minutes per week, depending on your goals.
Aerobic exercise - the kind of exercise that makes your heart beat faster and your breathing accelerate - is one of the cornerstones of an effective weight loss program. For most people, changing their eating behavior means eating fewer calories, a move that can cause their metabolism to drop. If you bolster your metabolism with regular aerobic exercise and then begin to gradually eliminate unnecessary calories, your weight loss results will be dramatic.
That, though, is only one of several significant reasons for adding aerobic exercise to your life. Aerobic exercise improves cardiovascular fitness. That is, it improves the ability of your heart, lungs, and arteries to deliver oxygen to working muscles, as well as your muscles' ability to use that oxygen to fuel its efforts. By getting your cardiovascular system into shape, you'll bump up the total number of calories you burn in a day. You'll also receive the other perks of cardiovascular fitness: lower cholesterol, reduced risk of heart disease (and some cancers), better toned muscles, increased energy, and a more shapely body, just to name a few!
What Kind of Aerobic Exercise?
When weight loss is your goal, it's critical to choose a form of aerobic exercise that is highly aerobic. The more highly aerobic an activity is, the more aerobic enzymes it will cause your body to produce. These enzymes, found mostly in the muscles, help you burn fat, so you want your body to produce as many of them as possible.
The workouts that I consider the most effective forms of aerobic exercise - my A list - are powerwalking, jogging, aerobic dancing, and stair climbing. On the B list are stair stepping, elliptical exercise, spinning, stationary cycling, indoor rowing, and indoor cross-country skiing. Other workouts can help keep you healthy and contribute to weight loss, but these give you the most bang for your buck.
How Much?
One well-kept secret is that many of the beautiful bodies you see in movies, on TV, and in magazines, are the products of hours and hours of exercise. It's not that the glamorous owners of these bodies aren't busy, but often before being photographed they put a considerable amount of time into refining their shapes. It's part of their job.
In the real world, most people don't have that much time to devote to exercise, and I'm not expecting you to work out for hours at a time. But if your goal is to lose weight, you'll typically need to do at least fifty minutes a week of aerobic exercise. (Many people need to do more.) You can break up those minutes to best fit your schedule, but keep in mind that you'll need to do at least ten minutes of continuous exercise at a time to make any appreciable increase in your aerobic enzymes and thus your metabolism. If you hit a plateau in your weight loss, try adding more minutes of exercise each week; that should stimulate your body to start shedding pounds again.
How Hard?
The more aerobic work you perform in a given amount of time, the better cardiovascular shape you'll be in and the less body fat you'll retain. Perhaps you've heard that if you want to burn fat, you should stick to low-intensity exercise, but the rationale behind that recommendation is faulty. It's true that at higher intensities your body tends to burn more carbohydrates (in the form of glycogen, stored in the muscles and liver) than it does stored body fat. However, it doesn't matter that much which fuel you burn the most of during exercise. What does matter is that by exercising at a higher intensity you'll increase your metabolism, thus burning a higher rate of calories 24 hours a day!
The difference in the amount of fat you burn if you go slowly for thirty minutes and the amount you burn if you go at a moderately high pace for thirty minutes is pretty negligible. But the difference between the amount of fat your body will burn if you have a highly fit cardiovascular system and a system that's just so-so is significant. In the end, a revved-up metabolism will play a bigger part in ridding your body of excess fat than a low-intensity workout ever could.
So what is the ideal intensity? One that gets you "in the zone." Being in the zone means exercising at 70 to 80 percent of your maximum ability. There are two ways to figure out if you're reaching that goal.
The first method is a numerical equation that calculates what's known as your "target heart rate range." This is the recommended range of heartbeats per minute that you should achieve during exercise in order to train your cardiovascular system safely. To estimate your target heart rate range at 75 percent of your maximum ability, start by figuring out your target heart rate: 220 - your age x 75 percent (.75). So if you're forty years old, your target heart rate is 180 x .75 = 135 beats per minute. To get the target heart rate range, add and subtract 5 (beats) from your target heart rate. For a forty-year-old, that comes out to 130 to 140 beats per minute. So if you're forty, after you warm up for five minutes or so, your heart rate should be between 130 and 140 beats per minute for the duration of your workout.
Continues...
Excerpted from Get with the Program! Guide to Good Eating by Greene, Bob Excerpted by permission.
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