Broke is the New Rich
March 11, 2011
This week I was the recipient of a Barn Raising but instead of a barn it was my house and instead of a raising it was more of a razing and instead of building a place in which to put my cows, it was more along the lines of trying to sell it to avoid The New F Word- Foreclosure.
Until you’ve had a chance to see friends in action the way I have this week, you cannot fully appreciate the definition of the word friendship. It is true; When crisis strikes, we find out who our true friends are. Often if a crisis is bad enough, like when there’s a terrible illness or injury or even worse, when a loved one dies, our friends want to rally around- they are wringing their hands, wanting to do something , anything. The truth is that most times, when an accident or injury or illness or death happens, there’s not one thing for the people who love us, to DO.
But in our house-crisis situation, there was not just one thing to do, but hundreds of things that my friends not only could do, but they really, really would not take No for an answer to do and they did those 987 things that were wrong with my house in an amazing record breaking week of dumping, scrubbing, scraping, moving, rearranging and painting.
After eight days of overtime back-breaking work, the end result was that my house was an Extreme House Makeover; so extreme it could be a new hit reality show, but not extreme only in the end result but also Extreme in that my friends, who’s health and fitness has always been my business, now were making my house their business.
Just like author Deborah Underwood has said, there are many kinds of Quiet: first awake Quiet, jelly-side down Quiet, don’t scare the baby robins Quiet, car ride at night Quiet.
On that same line of thinking, there are many kinds of Broke: the I forgot my wallet and can’t stop at Starbucks Broke, the I’m in college and temporarily Broke, the Homeless Shelter Broke and now, there’s a new kind of Broke- the I thought we were rich but now there’s no job and should we send our kids to college or pay the mortgage Broke.
So. It was time to sell our heart, I mean, our home, even though none of us were ready, not our 18 year old son, who will leave our nest next September, and certainly not our 16 year old twins who only have one year left at the high school in this school district where they’ve attended since kindergarten. And certainly not me. Beyond not wanting to clean out 18 years worth of clutter and cluttered memories from the basement to the attic- an idea that was not only overwhelming and paralyzing- but who felt the heartbreak every time a neighbor walked or drove by our house.
Ask anyone on Lincoln Avenue. I am the (self-appointed) mayor of our street. I also used to be the Bike Whisperer, having taught every child under 12 years old on Lincoln Avenue to ride a bike. I also was the Grand Poo-Bah for the Halloween parades, the dog funerals, the Memorial Day Talent Shows and holding the world’s record for number of kids jumped over by a dog(a kid pyramid of seven).
I try to soothe myself by reading the paper and reminding myself that this predicament is not the humiliating event that it would’ve been ten years ago. Today, we are a statistic; we are one in every six families in the country. We are no longer the upper middle class. As a matter of fact I saw a frightening scale the other day that put our family of five under the poverty line. We are POOR! Shocking to me, but nothing new in 2011.
But something unprecedented happened since last Wednesday.
In the words of author Gene O’Kelly, not only have I let go of something precious but I’ve also gained something precious, and that is the palpable sense of being carried by my communitywhen I couldn’t walk through this letting go process by myself. How precious the feeling of neighbors and even long time friends reaching out and helping in ways that perhaps used to be acceptable (when was the last time you asked your neighbor for even a cup of sugar?) . This week, no one rang the doorbell. They just marched in and got down on their knees and started scrubbing.
It took me a week to find out who painted the corner of the bathroom where my two teenage boys had missed the target for the past six years. It turned out to be my next door neighbor Martine and my longest friend Stephanie (who has three teenage boys herself)who went in there and anonymously redid that bathroom. They get the MVP (Most Vile Painting) award.
My dearest time friends (and even some friends I haven’t had coffee with in years) built shelves, threw my wrong-sized fridge out and moved in another, better sized one they found in my neighbor’s garage. My friend Susan had just sold her house in Vermont and not only did she let me move her furniture in to my living room, she let me store my furniture in her garage! Then there was Gina. Do you have a Gina in your life? If not, you need one. She was the SWAT team leader. SWAT team leaders do not ask, you know. They just see what needs to be done, pick the least intrusive time to ambush and in they go. Very effective. She was the one with the insistance on helping me. Her email said “I’m coming.” She had vision and creativity to see what I needed (and to overcome my hillbilly tendencies) and to assign the target teams to do it. At times this past weekend she, without a whistle even, was the traffic cop directing movers, painters and gofers in ten different directions. Not only that, she let me cry over long expired beach passes , trophies, bus passes and report cards, but also had the fortitude to allow my sniffles to dry, then snatch the random scraps from my hand and either file it away or pitch it.
My dear neighbors arrived with lottery tickets in the hopes that I’d win and get to stay! I have one friend in particular who is a former beauty queen (Miss Tennessee is my nickname for her) I used to think of her as Elle from Legally Blonde; the “bend. and snap!” girl. BUT because she slaved painting my radiators and heaving carpet out the upstairs windows for three days, I know she would also respond like Elle did in the movie “What? Like getting into Harvard is hard?” Mizz Tennesse would say”What? Like renovating Penny’s house is hard?” An amazing gift, my firends have given me.
My friend Debby,who will be the one that will ride in the ambulance with me, was the one kneeling with her arm around me in the attic while I uncovered and recovered long-lost and disorganized but also never to be forgotten home videos and photo albums. Needless to say, she made me organize them.
Beyond these angels, there were probably thirty more friends and neighbors trudging silently back and forth between the dumpster and my house and sweeping up in the background. They know who they are and I’ve got dibs on sitting next to them in heaven.
In the weirdest way, my house is now the most livable it has ever been, only because my friends have helped me, in the most radical way, to make it the most sell-able.
So. I can’t write about fitness this week. But I’ve always said that fitness can be a metaphor for life and that what applies to life also applies to fitness. When we least feel like walking the walk is when it most matters. And from the dirt can arise the most beautiful of flowers. And this week,I have been given the gift of community and friendship that almost (almost) eclipses the loss that I will feel leaving this street and this house.
I should also mention that releasing the bondage of all my “stuff’ is very similar to how it must feel when we shed unwanted pounds and start to feel what it feels like to be free of uneccessary weight that we didn’t know was weighing us down until it was gone. Finally, we can breathe.
So if this is the way it feels to be Broke, then I am the Richest Broke Girl in all of history. Bring it on.
Building Your life In The Spaces Between the Peaks & Valleys
February 25, 2011
I had a lively conversation with my indoor cycling girls yesterday morning during the pauses between songs. The John Mellencamp song “Wild Nights” was playing, so I threw out the question “Have any of you had a particularly Wild in-the-John-Mellencamp-manner Time recently?” Heads hung, eye contact vanished and silent breathing filled the room. Okay, then. Time to rephrase the question. “ Have any of you ever had a Wild Time?” (silence again).
Like any aerobics teacher worth her weight, I had to keep pushing. I tried to inspire them with my story from my 20’s. I was dating an Irishman named Liam Seamus McDuffee who took me to the most raucous Irish bar party I’ve ever step danced into(those men in kilts really don’t wear anything underneath!!) I woke up the morning after with green hair. It was AWESOME.
So now the girls in spinning class are all digging deep in their long-term memory bank and my friend Kelsey pipes up “I have a tattoo!!!” Well, since no one else in the room had a tattoo, we needed more details: Where?!! (she wouldn’t tell us, but I know that it’s not visible in the locker room) but when we pressed her for more info she told us that her kids thought it was a birthmark. Score one for Kelsey!
Next Sarah shouted out that she used to have a belly ring and Mary claimed that she had once stayed up until dawn 30 years ago when she was at Cornell and then it came out that several of us had been to nude beaches (but only a few of us were actually naked on the nude beach. Ladies, that is cheating. If you are going to get wild and go to a nude beach, you cannot wear your tankini.) The memories were now flooding back. Several spinners recalled dancing on a table but to my disappointment, none did it nude nor with a lampshade on their head.
When you are in your twenties, even trickling into your thirties, life is loaded with peak moments. Wild times are as available to you as they are to Charlie Sheen. And young adulthood is not only the rowdiest period of your life. It’s got bigness in general. You graduate, get a job, get married, buy a house , get a dog, have kids.
It’s just like the Katy Perry video. Just one fireworks display after another. One toast after another.
Clink, clink.
Then, as we age, there’s th
e long stretch of space before any more peaks and that’s not even counting the valleys. At my gym, we might not be able to remember the last wild time we got wild, but every one of us can remember at least a few funerals. Valleys blindside. Peaks diminish in both quantity and quality. And then there is the long spaces in between. The ho-hum pace of life can be hypnotic in a highway-hypnosis-kind-of way.
So the best advice I can give anyone in my Workout World who finds themselves in the plain vanilla space between life’s banana split moments is to aim for a goal.
Goals, if they are very specific and achievable, can be very motivational and they get us out of the loop in our heads that make it hard to get started TODAY.
Let’s not forget exciting. If your goal can be, in anyway, exciting, that counts as an extra topping for sure.
Your goal could be lofty, like 72 year old New York Times Health Reporter Jane Brody, who, last year, took her two artificial knees and hiked in Tasmania, then walked all over Sydney and finally biked 35 miles a day on a cycling tour of Vietnam. (I was so jealous.)
Or it could be a practical goal, like aiming to jog the entire way around the block without stopping to rest. Or fitting into your old wedding dress. Or giving up wine for a month: not very exciting, I realize, but it might be just what you need to do to fit into your wedding dress, and THAT part would be exciting!
Go online and Google “5K races” plus your zip code and find a local race this spring that you could train for.
Determine to return to a class reunion in good shape.
If you get stuck or need some advice find someone who could help you.
Keep yourself motivated, not through excitement about wild plans or peak moments, but also by mixing up your workout and trying new challenges. You’ll get satisfying results.
Put an event or an occasion on the calendar. Be sure it’s realistic but make it challenging. Tell some people who love you what your new goal is and ask them to lovingly support you; or to join you!
Then you have to break it down into measurable portions so that you know what you have to do each day to stay on target.Write each day’s efforts on a chart on the fridge.
Check , check, check it off so you can see your progress.
Your goal doesn’t have to be a peak occasion. When you become chronologically enriched, you have to find ways to bring satisfaction and excitement to the spaces between the big moments, right? So swim the river, dive in with the Polar Bear Club, loop the neighborhood, bike the state or county, or here’s an overdue one: quit smoking. Making the big changes that you’ve been meaning to for years just takes a few weeks of discipline. Vicious effort becomes Virtuous.
In the back of your mind, if you have a nagging improvement that you could make to improve how you feel about yourself, Do it now!
Especially if it is the type of healthy change that can add years to your life. Don’t wait for the peaks or the valleys in life. The spaces in between are where there’s room to live better.
Get Three Days Under Your Belt
February 18, 2011
The third day of any diet is absolutely the worst. It’s worse than being on Staycation during winter break after a snow-filled winter and it’s worse than your friends getting on a plane to frolic on the beach in 
Buenos Aires and it’s even worse than them dropping their dog off at your house on their way to the airport at the beginning of that break.
Making it through your third day of a new regime is harder than the longest staycation.
Author Martha Beck wrote a book called “The Four-Day Win” in which she explains that if you can make it through Day Three of any diet you are 90% more likely to get to your goal.
Firstly, we often eat out of habit, because we want to, not because we are hungry. Eating is extremely enjoyable .
Hunger is something very different. Hunger is a demand, not an option. Real hunger, although part of the daily life of millions of people on this planet, is uncommon in our Western world except among the very poor and those engaged in dieting. One thing you learn from the worst moments in a diet is what hunger really is. Not only does it help one appreciate the suffering of those that don’t have enough food because of their situation rather than choice, it also teaches us a vital lesson about why we eat.
So the first three days of your diet may give you a “taste” of true hunger. After you’ve really felt hunger a few times in the course of the initial three days, you realize that most of the times people say, “I’m really hungry” they’re nothing of the sort. In all likelihood they’re motivated to eat by something other than hunger. Getting familiar with hunger teaches you how disconnected your desire to eat is from your body’s need for calories and how important it is, because of that, to control what you eat by some means other than instinct or will power.
This is where meal planning comes in. Planning meals in advance may seem like a pain and a real joy-kill as far as ruining the spontaneity that makes life enjoyable.
Eating is important; it’s one of very few things in life that isn’t optional. If you don’t eat, you die. If you eat too much for too long, you die.
You wouldn’t entertain the idea of investing in a company that didn’t have a budget, where the staff said, “We just spend whatever we feel like most days. It’ll all work out in the long run.” Not only would such a company probably go bankrupt, its department heads would have no way of knowing where the money was going and they’d have no way to measure actual performance against goals to discover where problems lay.
But by trying to “play it by ear” about what you eat or to try to balance your long term calorie intake meal by meal or by making every food decision on the spur of the moment, you’re placing something even more precious than your money, your own health, in the hands of a process that inevitably leads to major health complications.
Now occasionally in the business world, there are infrequent exceptions to the rule, like the manager who can run a small size business without a budget or a plan or there might be the rare “natural,” with a talent for assimilating large quantities of detail and extracting the meaning within, or else a business owner with a sixth sense for upcoming problems and a defensive instinct for solving them. These few, lucky corporate people the corporate equivalent of naturally skinny people that can eat whatever they want and never gain an ounce.
They don’t need the assistance of the calorie calculations that the rest of us must have to maintain or lose weight.
Here is a scene that replays itself in most households most every night after dinner. No one in your family eats the left-overs. But most nights there’s a big spoonful of macaroni and cheese or something equally delicious) leftover, not enough to make it worth getting out the Tupperware but too much to feed the dog and too much guiltlessly throw away. So you and the dog decide to split it as part of the clean-up patrol.
200 calories might not seem like much but if you are on a diet this is a 10% increase over the number of calories you need to eat maintain your weight.
If this happens regularly enough, there’s a small shift in the balance between calories in and calories out.
If your balance slips up by as little as 150 calories a day–an ounce of Fritos, the rest of your sister’s smoothie, a piece of leftover bagel when the kids had to run for the bus- the scale will start to creep up. Granted it will only be a third of a pound a week or 1.25 pounds over the course of a month, and even if you weigh in daily, it won’t even show up for awhile. But the trend line will start to rise.
After six months (five to ten pounds later )you might not feel fat but rather powerless and frustrated. “I just can’t seem to lose any more weight!” you complain.
And all from one extra helping of mac & cheese per day. That’s why meal planning is key.
No matter how long or severe your diet, the first 72 hours are the worst. This sad fact forces most people to abandon their diet which, if continued, would soon yield sustainable weight loss without undue discomfort.
Once you’ve surmounted the difficult period at the start of a diet, you can be assured the worst is behind you; it’s unlikely you’ll experience anything that bad for the rest of its course. Humans may have a limitless ability to ignore unpleasant facts, but we’re also able to endure truly awful realities: high school, boot camp, root canals, going public, life–as long as we know it’s only for a while and we’ll never have to do it again.
Planning a diet from an understanding of how weight loss really works gives you a handle on how long you’ll have to endure its unpleasantness. Knowing how feedback can control your weight equips you with at least intellectual confidence that once you’ve lost weight you’ll never have to go through that again.
This explains the rocky start every dieter must endure. There is a delay, usually between 48 and 72 hours, between the time you cut back on calories and when fat burning begins in earnest. In those hours, you will experience the most severe shortage of nutrition in the entire course of your diet. You’ll feel cold, weak, irritable, tired yet prone to sleep poorly, and a constant, gnawing hunger that urges you toward the refrigerator and implores you to rethink your resolve to lose weight. It will feel worse than the idea of your vacationing friends on the beach in their bikinis.
First, some perspective: the first two or three days of a diet are rough but, all in all, you won’t feel anything close to as miserable as when you catch a winter cold, nor will you suffer as long or feel the lingering effects of a cold. A cold makes you feel really awful and leaves you in worse shape. Starting a diet makes you feel less miserable for fewer days than a cold and it’s the first step toward much better health.
Only the fact that it’s self-inflicted makes it harder to live through. A all, you don’t voluntarily catch a cold and you don’t have the option of ending it at will.
I view what must be endured in the first few days of a diet as an investment that will pay off in reduced suffering later on. As I mentioned in conjunction with exercise, it’s worth comparing the undeniable aggravation of dieting with the inestimably less enjoyable by-product of excess weight: heart attacks, strokes, and premature death. If you think of a balance sheet with three days of hunger on one side and six weeks of recuperation from a coronary on the other, it’s a lot easier to get through the first days into the long haul where dieting becomes at most a nuisance to be tolerated.
You won’t be as hungry after four days. That’s only 96 hours. Get four days behind you. It’ll be over before your friends step off the plane complaining that their belt is too tight.
Is Managing Your Weight Worth Ten More Years?
February 11, 2011
You are the only one who knows exactly why you decided to lose weight but, without considering vanity and other more minor motivators, let’s begin with a couple of biggies. How do you feel about staying alive for longer? And how does not dying of a heart attack sound? Let’s not forget staying younger for longer and remaining out of the nursing home.
Look around and you will see lots of obesity but what you will not see is lots of obese septuagenarians or octuagenarians (and God Bless any sized nonagenarians you might see on the street.)
People who remain obese into their second half of life cut the length of that second half by more than half that of a normal weight person. The 70, 80 and 90 year old people you see living an active life are the lean ones. And it’s not because the heavier old folks stayed home, or that they decided to lose weight in their fifth or sixth decade. It’s because, as Hippocrates, The Dr Oz of 460 BC said more than 2400 years ago, “Fat men are more likely to die suddenly than the slender.”
If you are obese, you are going to live a shorter life. Raise your hand if you’re ready to go even one day sooner than you have to.
I often try to motivate with more immediate benefits of weight loss and exercise. How we look in the mirror is highly valued in the world today. And watching the number on the scale go down and the wiggle room in your waistband is reinforcing because it is measurable. But the most fundamental reason to lose weight is to live younger for longer. Whatever you treasure in life, good luck enjoying it if you’re dead.
There’s a huge trade-off that we can’t quite comprehend because it comes AFTER the fact- at the end of our lifespan. Is living five or ten more years worth the inconvenience of establishing new eating habits or even the slight irritation level of a stricter diet or committing to thirty minutes of walking every day? Think of someone you’ve lost and tell me that even one or two more days would not be an immeasurable gain and worth much more discomfort than not having ice cream every night before bed. Look at your children and imagine not being around to see their children. Death at any time is too soon and early death due to a deconditioned lifestyle immediately disqualifies you from any benefits you look forward to at the end of it all, whether it’s finally getting your IRA benefits, retiring to the Bahamas or seeing peace in the Middle East (we may have to live a few lifetime lengths to get to see that one.)
Changing your diet is not fun and days struggling to stick with an exercise are wretched, but keeling over dead is worse. Tomorrow will be better. And each day you stick with it the less it will impinge on your mood.
Even if obesity doesn’t shorten your lifespan, you’re opted to suffer from a slew of medical complaints and issues that will make the years you live less pleasant and more limited. By medical complaints I refer to the really big irritations like heart attacks, diabetes and high blood pressure as well as to more vague style-crampers like such as shortness of breath (“Hey! Wait for me!”) and muscle aches and joint pains.
Pick up a ten pound bag of potatoes and see how much effort it takes to lug that thing everywhere you go all day long. Yet many people walk around with many times that weight strapped around their middle. No wonder they have no energy or feel awful. This proves the point that you can get accustomed to almost anything.
If you’ve struggled with obesity for a long time, it’s difficult to pinpoint what it’s costing you not just in how you feel every day but even more difficult to see it in terms of future health problems at the opposite end of your lifespan.
The only answer is to do it and find out how great you’ll feel without the extra weight. Stick with the thirty minutes a day. See the diet through and experience its happy conclusion for yourself.
The first month or so is not easy. Focus instead beyond the hunger to how you feel physically and energetically and pat yourself on the back for what you’ve accomplished so far. And remember that it will be worth a few hunger pangs.
You Can’t Exercise Super Bowl Eating Away
February 4, 2011
Research shows that during an average Super Bowl party, adults each consume an average of 1500 calories. This is a bit less than an entire day’s worth of calories.
To burn it off, you’d have to walk or bike for five hours straight or play tennis or swim for three hours. Or if you didn’t feel like doing that you could run a half-marathon.
Next, compare those exercise minutes (hours) with the calories in these items:
One serving of loaded nachos- 570 calories
12 Doritos-150 calories
Large slice of double cheese pizza-390 calories
Obviously, even sixty minutes of exercise does not burn off much food.
So unless you are a professional athlete or a stair master maniac don’t even try to exercise those calories away in order to lose weight. Exercise will help your drop pounds in less obvious ways like revving up your metabolism and by sometimes reducing your appetite. But those are side benefits.
The real reason to exercise is for longevity and vitality: you will live longer and you will feel better.
Consider the benefits of exercise from those standpoints.
LONGEVITY
Unless you grew up athletic or involved in sports, we all grow up and get to an age where people can’t MAKE us do things we’d rather not. And if you don’t love to exercise, the case against doing it is rather persuasive.
-Exercise takes up time.
-We don’t always feel like exercising
-Why take up time doing something you don’t feel like doing when it takes up valuable time in your day?
But there is a flaw in this reasoning. The premises are correct but the conclusion does not factor in the irrefutable evidence that exercise will, for almost everybody, make you live longer.
Say you are forty years of age and you workout fifteen minutes every day from age forty until you’re age 65. You will have spent three months exercising during the span of those 25 years.
But there’s solid evidence that this amount of exercise (just fifteen minutes a day) will allow you to live three years longer so you’ve just added 1000 days or 2.75 years to your lifespan.
Even spending just fifteen minutes a day exercising can extend your lifespan to what works out to be 2.5 hours more per day to do whatever you FEEL like doing. Even if you only added one more year to your lifespan you will still end up with 270 additional days if you exercise.
Still not convinced?
Let’s talk about FEELING BETTER
Not only does exercise give you more days on this earth, it also makes your time more pleasant. You feel better, think more clearly, it wll make you a better lover, you’ll sleep better and have more vitality for all activities in your daily routine.
If you aren’t convinced yet, consider that if you do not exercise, you are much more likely to have a heart attack, or if you are going to have one anyway, that you are going to have it sooner rather than later. Even if you are not convinced that you’ll feel one bit better if you start exercising, you’ve got to admit that you’ll feel much worse after dropping to the floor with a heart attack. Have you talked to someone that’s had a heart attack? They will tell you unanimously that you’d be better off avoiding it. Those who were not resuscitated were not available for comment.
WHAT TO DO?
Just get moving. Thirty minutes a day. Aim for every day and then, even if you miss an occasional day, you will get five or so workouts in per week.
HOW SHOULD YOU DEAL WITH THE SUPER BOWL FEEDFEST?
Since you can’t exercise enough to burn off all those calories, the BEST plan is to try not to overeat in the first place. That means you need a plan. Here are a few tips. See which ones are applicable to your party plans.
-Have a plan and tell someone about it so you can be accountable to someone who is in the same room with you and who loves you and wants you to succeed. And remember that last part when they tell you to back away from the bowl.
-Create opportunities to make the correct choices. Get in the habit of waiting just a minute or two between your impulse and your action. I call this the delay technique.
-Use positive self back-talk. So if a simple “no I don’t need that nacho,” isn’t working, then tell yourself: “Well, maybe I do need it, but not yet. First I’ll go get a drink of water, and then I’ll decide if I really want it I can have it. At least some of the time, you may actually change your mind and talk yourself out of it.
-Envision consequences. When considering whether you want a second helping of nachos ask yourself if it’s worth another hour on the treadmill. If you eat it will you feel bloated and gross tomorrow?
-Consider the Butterfly Effect. Little decisions over time add up. Life is about trade-offs and you don’t get to have everything. Choose Carefully.
-Not deciding is Deciding. If you walk into a Super Bowl Party without a specific plan of (food)attack, (I will have a glass of water between each glass of wine OR I will not eat standing up OR I will not choose a seat in front of the nachos .you ARE deciding (by not planning carefully).
One last great idea is to get some exercise between now and kick-off time. And may the best team win.
Strengthening Your Do It Anyway Muscle & Weakening Your I Don’t Feel Like It Muscle
January 28, 2011
I’ve been sighing a lot lately, for several reasons. Firstly, there are 27 inches of snow in our yard, secondly we’ve had too many snow daze to count and with three teenagers, snow daze are calculated in dog years and finally I had to spend the pennies I’d been saving in a coffee can for a get-away on four new snow tires (sigh).
This is the time of year when I just don’t feel like it. I don’t feel like getting out of bed. I don’t feel like going outside or going to the gym or taking a shower.I cannot remember the last time I woke up in the morning and was raring to get to exercise class.At this time of year and especially in this weather, no one usually FEELS like it.
Of course lots of us like exercise once we get about half way through and everyone loves a workout after it is completed, but very few souls are skipping around the spinning room with joy prior to class.
Of course, those who, over the years, are faithful in their fitness, don’t mind doing the sweating, because they’ve started to reap the benefits of feeling and looking better.These people tend to not mind exercise at all, because they’ve integrated the connection between their fitness regime and good bodily results.
As Dr Phil says, “You don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.”This means putting on your running shoes and grabbing your ipod, even as the voice in your head concocts various excuses and ideas to avoid sweating.
You have to approach your workout plans just like you deal with brushing your teeth. Do you ever skip brushing your teeth because you brushed them yesterday? Or do you tell yourself you can brush them tomorrow or that you know you SHOULD brush, but you just don’t want to do it right now? Or how about saying to heck with brushing all together because you haven’t done it in so long, why start now?
Think of exercise as your anatomical brushing.One way to get yourself moving is by using what I call self backtalk. You have to learn to respond to that voice in your head in the same way that I talk back to the Other Penny. When she suggests sleeping five minutes more, I tell her we can take a nap later (even though she never feels like it after she gets her body moving!) When she wants to skip a day, I tell her she might not feel like it but do it anyway. When she says she’s tired, I respond by saying five minutes is better than no minutes and that the hardest part is getting started; then it gets easier.
I also think that every time we give in to these sabotaging thoughts, we strengthen our giving-in habits and conversely, every time we resist these thoughts and exercise anyway, we strengthen our Nike (Just Do It) habits.Another big part of a consistent exercise routine is making exercise a priority. You have to put it on your calendar just like any other important appointment. You deserve to put yourself first.Another self backtalk sentence you can use is to tell your self that you can be loose with your fitness routine OR you can be fit, but you can’t be both.Or how about this self backtalk response:
I may not care if I skip my workout now, but I will care a LOT when I get on the scale.
Tell yourself NO EXCUSES.
Another important part of this self backtalk is to give your self credit when you DO do it in spite of not wanting to.
You deserve credit every time you exercise, every time you stick to your workout plan. And every time you use your “Do It Anyway” muscle it will get stronger.
And every time you refuse to use your “I Don’t Feel Like It” muscle, it gets weaker.
If I am honest, I’ll admit that I really didn’t feel like writing today. But I told myself I had no choice; that people would be counting on their Friday Happy Hour Fitness Fix.
So think about what’s on your list that you really Don’t Feel Like doing and get busy-Do It Anyway.
Hacker’s Guide To Weight Loss
January 21, 2011
Today, use of the term “hacker” mainly refers to computer criminals. But many hackers are not lawbreakers. As a matter of fact many hackers are savvy and entrepreneurial. Often times hackers are people who get a kick out of figuring out ways to buck the system.
Now if we could only figure out a way to hack our way to weight loss. Yesterday on the Today Show, Kathie Lee Gifford spoke of trying a new non-surgical cosmetic technique which promised to melt fat from her abdomen. I got very excited. It actually sounded like a new “smart science” device that uses laser and heat to break down subcutaneous fat stores. This would be considered, in my Workout World, an excellent hack.
Hackers thrive on finding back door entrances to cryptic systems. Almost always we think of hackers as engineers who hack to find better methods that save time/energy/money or all of the above but many times in the health and fitness world there are smart techniques we can use to improve our health and fitness level.
Do you think controlling your weight is impossible? Do you find your weight struggles agonizing to deal with or incongruous with the way you are living
Phenomenal things are often accomplished by regular people who never realized that what they were doing was improbable and if they’d known they couldn’t do it, they might never have attempted it in the first place. Hackers have often witnessed one individual or tiny groups make important inventions while bigger businesses were limted by thinking it wasn’t worth trying.
Once you realize that you can empower yourself to outfox your own limitations: You start to think of yourself as someone who CAN lose weight and be healthier, then you are emancipated from your own limiting self-beliefs. You aren’t watching your thin life pass you by. You are the boss of your body. You are now a hacker. By getting around the limitations that caused you to gain weight in the first place you are hacking the most amazingly complex system in the universe: your own body.
Losing weight provides an interesting look at the irony of how we deal with our own consciousness; the distinction between mind and body. Weight loss concerns the body at it’s most basic level; eat more and gain weight, eat less and lose weight. But the reasons we can’t lose weight mostly comes from the nuances of psychology as opposed to the biology of our body.
To stay at your ideal weight, you must eat just the right amount. To eat the right amount, over the long haul of your lifetime, you need an incentive to follow that guidance. Watching the weather forecast doesn’t make you dress appropriately for the weather, but it provides the information you need, if you want to dress comfortably
Whether you’ve always had a weight problem, have been up and down with binges and purges or have just gradually added a pound or two over the decades, the main tools you need are exactly the same as the main tools you need to get anywhere in your life:
-Willpower
-A specific, measurable, realistic, trackable goal that you can be accountable to.
-A high threshold for discomfort
The bigger the goal (or the more weight you need to lose) the more satisfying it will be to reach it (or lose it). That’s why it’s sometimes hard to lose those last six pounds; the satisfaction is not as dramatic as when you lose a hundred pounds.
The hack in anything is the ability to delay immediate gratification in exchange for a more lasting and satisfying goal.
This is what it takes to lose weight. If you have a very accomplished life but are obese or overweight the only thing you need to do is make weight loss as important a goal as those other things in life where you’ve succeeded. Go about weight loss like all the other accomplished areas of your life. Make a specific plan and stick with the initial discomfort until you get there.
It’s like brushing your teeth, getting groceries for dinner, or getting the oil changed in the car. You don’t schedule an appointment with the dentist and then say to yourself at the last minute, “I really don’t FEEL like going today.’ You get the job done, and done right, as soon as you can and with minimal whining. That’s how we become successful business people and that’s what it takes to lose weight.
Dormant within each of us is the power to be at your optimal weight for the remainder of your life. You just need to realize that your weight is within your conscious control. Know that, and you can achieve it.
Once you’ve felt firsthand how good it feels to weigh what you want to weigh you will have the self-esteem to stay with it, even if it means giving up that crème brulee for dessert when everyone else is ordering it.
And yet, simply by eating that little bit less every day for a year, you can subtract 25 pounds from your weight in the space of a single year (assuming you weren’t gaining weight before).
Daily Calories Burned- Men
Height Frame
Small Medium Large
5 1 1427-1784 1542-1928 1652-2065
5 2 1471-1839 1580-1975 1695-2119
5 3 1516-1894 1619-2024 1741-2176
5 4 1561-1951 1660-2075 1787-2234
5 5 1606-2008 1704-2129 1834-2293
5 6 1653-2066 1749-2186 1883-2354
5 7 1700-2125 1796-2245 1933-2417
5 8 1748-2185 1845-2306 1985-2481
5 9 1796-2245 1895-2369 2037-2547
5 10 1845-2306 1948-2435 2091-2614
5 11 1895-2368 2003-2503 2146-2683
6 0 1945-2431 2059-2574 2203-2753
6 1 1996-2495 2118-2647 2260-2825
6 2 2047-2559 2178-2723 2319-2899
6 3 2099-2624 2240-2800 2379-2974
6 4 2152-2690 2304-2881 2441-3051
Daily Calories Burned-Women
Height Frame
Small Medium Large
4 8 1171-1464 1244-1555 1365-1707
4 9 1202-1502 1281-1601 1401-1752
4 10 1234-1542 1319-1649 1439-1798
4 11 1269-1586 1358-1698 1478-1847
5 0 1305-1631 1399-1749 1518-1898
5 1 1344-1680 1441-1801 1560-1950
5 2 1384-1730 1484-1855 1604-2005
5 3 1427-1784 1528-1910 1649-2061
5 4 1472-1840 1574-1967 1695-2119
5 5 1518-1898 1620-2025 1744-2180
5 6 1567-1959 1668-2085 1793-2242
5 7 1618-2023 1718-2147 1845-2306
5 8 1671-2089 1768-2210 1897-2372
5 9 1726-2157 1820-2275 1952-2440
5 10 1783-2228 1873-2341 2008-2510
5 11 1842-2302 1927-2409 2065-2582
6 0 1903-2378 1982-2478 2124-2655
As you see, the only real control we have is over what goes in: what, when, and how much we eat. Weight control can be reduced to a very simple matter of arithmetic. Total calories in the food you eat every day, over a period of time. Take your daily total of calories you burn per day, roughly the same for everybody of your sex, height, build, and level of activity. Subtracting the calories burned from the calories eaten gives excess calories per day. This number times thirty is excess calories per month. A pound of fat is equivalent to about 3500 calories. If you eat 3500 calories more in a month than you burn, you’ll gain a pound that month. If you burn 3500 calories more than you eat, you’ll lose a pound. All the weight you gain or lose is the consequence of these simple numbers.
Here are a few other Hacker tools you can use:
-Eat thirty grams of protein within thirty minutes of awaking. This revs up your metabolism and gives it something with which to kindle the metabolic fire.
-You bite it, you write it. Journaling is directly coorelated with success in weight loss, especially over time. Write down and add up the calorie count as well.
-Get rid of artificial sweetners. They make the body think there’s sugar coming in and it reacts accordingly.
-Weigh yourself everyday but chart it so that you don’t get discouraged by the vasscilations.
-Get an accountability partner to report to.
_Don’t eat within three hours of bedtime.
-And I’ll keep you posted on the Kathie Lee Belly Blaster story. For all of us wanna-be weight loss hackers, I hope it works.
Lessons Learned From A Snow Day
January 14, 2011
1. Don’t stay up later than usual. Our recent Snowmageddon was predicted a few days in advance. Before the kids got out of school Tuesday, school was canceled for Wednesday so, unlike many snow days, we knew we wouldn’t have to wake up at six am to check the website to answer the age old questions; “Do we? Or do we not have to go to school?” So I went to the library and checked out the maximum number of DVDs that one person is allowed and returned home to begin our movie marathon. (Best of the pick-Slumdog Millionaire; Runner-up; Book of Eli). My reasoning for staying up until midnight was flawed, even though my motivation was not- I rationalized that Snow Days are perfect for bucking our usual routine and doing what we usually don’t. Fair enough. Where I went wrong was thinking that I’d be able to sleep in past 6:07am. You see, my body was capable of sleeping in; it’s just that no one told my eyelids, who automatically popped open at 6:07am, despite how little sleep the rest of my body parts needed. Lesson Learned.
2. Have a Non-Negotiable Bare Minimum Plan
Brushing your teeth is on my non-negotiable list (although my friend Betty, from my gym did tell me that she always brushes her teeth at the gym and that because she didn’t come to the gym, she didn’t brush her teeth at all on Wednesday. Come on, People.) Walking the dog is another one. It’s raining like hell? Too bad. Get the leash let’s go. Seventeen inches of snow? No problem. As soon as I get the pitiful “it’s time for my walk, isn’t it?” look from Winnie, we get our boots and head out. “Nuff said.
A snow storm does have the potential, like all other schedule changes, to seriously derail a solid fitness plan. For those of you who are getting results, stop and think hard about what you can do in order to guarantee that this major change in your schedule doesn’t keep you from getting to your goals.
3. Take a Shower
It’s tempting to skip it. But if you do, you’ll feel more like yourself.
4.If you like a bit of muscle soreness, go ahead and shovel too much. Otherwise, get the kids to do it
4a. Warm up before you start shoveling I’m convinced that the reason so many people get stiff from shoveling is because they go from sitting on the couch in PJ’s to throwing on their snow gear and immediately digging in. With the heavy snowfall from this past week, this can be really too much, too soon. Next time, prior to putting on your snow gloves and picking up the shovel, do some squats, some walking lunges and most importantly some planks and some crunches to wake up the abs (the abs are the opposite muscle group to the spine so if your core is firing then you less apt to strain your back)
5.If you are the type to start drizzling fat gravy over your loaded nachos just because you are off your routine, Have A Non-Negotiable Snow Day Workout Plan that you can do anywhere. Even stranded at the airport. Or in your mother-in-laws spare bedroom. What would that look like?
SNOW DAY WORKOUT PLAN
500 moving squats (or jog in place for 20 minutes or run 2 miles if you can)
400 jumping jacks
300 walking and/or reverse lunges (tapping your knees on the ground ya’ll)
200 crunches
100 pushups (okay, maybe not 100, just do as many good form push-ups as you can)
Weather is never within our control. Our jobs are often outside our control. Idiots are always driving the car directly in front of us. But our body is almost always within our control.
If you get a workout in not only will you feel better but it can also still be a great day. Controlling your body puts you back in control of your life. And as a local female weather forecaster recently mentioned, seventeen inches of anything is too much. We need all the help we can muster to stay on track to reach of our fitness goals.
Tacks in the Road on the Path to Your New Year’s Resolutions
January 7, 2011
Making a New Year’s Resolution is one thing. Keeping it, as you are all well aware on this seventh day of the New Year, is an entirely different step class. This week as I sit in my cubicle at my gym (the better to eavesdrop on the front lobby conversations, My Dear) not one person’s shadow has darkened the doorway while exclaiming their excitement and enthusiasm for being “at the gym.” People solemnly enter, swipe their card, give a serious nod to the front desk staff, pivot robotically and head to the aerobic task at hand.
But the locker room I am happy to say, is, a whole ‘nother step class. Locker rooms are perfect for listening. (See my Do’s& Don’ts List below on Locker Rooms)Nudity in the locker room seems to have a sense of purpose surrounding it. When I’m undressing or redressing, I’m on the clock. I always feel the need to expedite and I certainly discourage eye contact and conversation until I get my hoohahs covered up. But, Boy, did I get a gratifying earful this week. What did I hear? Comments like “I am SO glad to get back in my routine!” and “That felt so great to get a workout in!” as well as “Man, that was hard but I feel so much better now.”
I will always tell you to focus on how you’ll feel afterwards, not on the dread you feel prior to working out. Do you know why? Because I assure you that when you finish it, you won’t be the same. Exercise will not only change how you feel about yourself but it will make you more confidant and effective in your life. I realize that it sounds like I am overstating things here but by making changes with our body we can dramatically improve our life. Ask anyone who’s lost a bunch of weight and they will tell you that they went from being invisible to being noticed, from being overlooked to being taken seriously; to being more of whom they were meant to be; to being half full in all areas of their life rather than half empty. That is because the exterior changes help you excavate into deeper, more social, changes. When you accomplish something that has a physical result (like losing weight) it changes ALL of you. You begin to consider that other, less visible changes (like switching jobs or making more money) might be possible. Unfortunately, most of us are resigned to “half empty glass” self talk like “I’ll ever be thin, that’s just the way I’m build” or “All the women on my side of the family are big.” Or “I have a sluggish metabolism”.
Mostly these are excuses for not changing. It’s easier to say yes to that cheesecake right now than to say no for a goal that might be a few months away. But if you can get yourself to the gym and feel how it feels after, then you can remind yourself that each day of letting that half empty feeling dominate gets you one day closer to leading a half empty life. Is that what you want at the end of it all? To know you settled?
And more importantly the opposite is true. Each day of making positive physical changes will trickle into years then decades of being the more complete you, not only physically but also in all other areas of your life. Otherwise, days turn into years, the years into decades and before you know it your Jerry Rafferty.
How do you become more successful and more productive? Exercise.
Start with the outside changes and in the trickle-down theory your life will get better. You will look in the mirror and not only see it on the outside but you’ll feel it on the inside. Controlling your body will help you improve all other areas of your life.
Of course, you could always wait for the diagnosis.
Or the divorce.
But I suggest that you refuse to accept a half empty body or a half empty life. Take one more look at your resolutions. Or better yet get a new sheet of paper and take stock of your body as it is now and list the half empty mis-selfconceptions that you are resigned to. If your only option was succeeding would you choose to make the change? This isn’t just a better body but a completely better life.
January 8th. Time to reinvent yourself.
LOCKER ROOM DO’S & DON”TS
by me
1. DON’T have complete conversations nude. You can respond monosyllabically,nod and smile at the floor but discourage long discourses on the pros and cons of public schools and their likeihood of calling a snow day for example.
2. If you are like me and grew up in the cattle style locker rooms, (with the big, round hand/hair washing water fountain with the step-on pedal. I loved that thing; where the coaches showered with the kids because they had to chaperone the dance after the game,) then DO walk somewhere (in the locker room) naked but you must have a purpose. Going to get a towel for example.
3. DON’T stand at the sink and brush teeth naked. Too much jiggling.
4. DO limit your nakedness to three minutes or less. Expedite your nudity.
5. DO follow the inverse principal that the younger you are the more naked you can be and the older you are the less naked.
6. DON’T do back flips. And more importantly no nude stretching. Steam and saunas are for sitting and sweating,on a towel as well as wrapped please. This is not hot yoga class.
7. DON’T look around OR make eye contact while your neighbors are nude.It’s not gay, it’s just weird.
8. DO look around while YOU are nude to be sure no one is looking at your hair distribution and if they are, DO give them a “yeah, so what if I don’t wax”look.
9. DO watch out for the locker room consigliere. Every locker room has one. It’s the person who is always there every time you are and they are right in the locker next to you even when the locker room is empty. (as a matter of fact that’s probably me)
10. DO keep your vajayjay under wraps if at all possible. Girls, we know this. Hoohahs are acceptable as long as they don’t drape down over your towel wrapped around your waist.
11. DO walk to the scales with your towel on but
12. DON’T weigh yourself with it on. Everyone knows towels weigh 70 or 80 pounds. Use the Penny Hoff Invisable-Weigh-In Method. Wait until the coast is clear. Then get on the scales wrapped, adjust scales to approximately your weight and at the last second whisk off towel and drop at your side. Make final scale adjustments and jump off while simultaneously whipping towel back around torso. I guarantee no one’s ever seen me on the scale even though I weigh in once a week. Or whenever the locker room’s empty, which it often is because I’m in there so much. I haven’t taken a shower at home in seven years. Ask my husband.
13. And finally, some no-brainer DON’TS ; no scratching, sloughing, picking, peeling or probing.
Time To Get BYOB
December 31, 2010
Today is the day I usually bark about making S.M.A.R.T resolutions. Since I’ve already beat that acronym to death you can read more HERE if you’ve been in seclusion for the past three years and missed it. All the rest of you: we are moving on. It’s time to Get BYOB. Which stands for Get Back Your Own Body. It’s time to stop twittering and start transforming. This will require you to do two things: Move More and Eat Less. Every day. Doesn’t that sound simple?
Exercise is a big part of it but if you want to change your body you HAVE to change what you eat. No amount of working out will transform your body unless you change what you do (and don’t) put in it. There are countless reasons why this should be YOUR year to Get BYOB. You’ve heard them all before: Health, Longevity, Vitality, Vanity. (See? I told you that you’d heard them all before).
It’s time to stop talking (and moaning) and GET BYOB. THIS IS YOUR YEAR.
Good intentions count for nothing unless you make a detailed plan with S.M.A.R.T goals and get started. You don’t have to hate your life while doing it either.
Can you get excited about how your life will be enhanced if you can Get BYOB?
If you need a gym, find one nearby. If you need a workout partner, call one today. You don’t have to be IN shape to do either of these things. When you come to class at my gym, you are taking a lesson and just like you wouldn’t assume you already need to know how to play the piano to take a piano lesson, you don’t already need to be fit or coordinated to take an exercise class. Just SHOW UP!
You want to live better for longer, don’t you? What are you waiting for? This is the day to motivate yourself because no one can motivate you better than YOU. Think of this challenge as filled with promise so that come next New Year’s Day you will remember today as the day you made up your mind to Get BYOB.
P.S. I couldn’t get up my nerve to tell you earlier about this final rule: This also means giving up alcohol. I know this sounds like an abomination; a direct affront to the Lord but be brave. At least until you get some momentum.
And trust me, if you quit drinking you WILL get momentum and weight will come off faster as well. You’ll lose a few pounds immediately. You’ll look in the mirror and notice how much better your eyes look. Go ahead and tie one on tonight. Have a few “Dirty like Mel Gibson meets BP Oil” Vodka martinis with three feta cheese Olives. The worse you feel in the morning the more motivated you will be to Get BYOB.
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