Reaping the Rewards

When I was teaching fitness classes three nights per week, I often used to sit on the sofa half an hour before I was due to leave and wish that I didn’t have to go. I used to think, “I can’t be bothered.” Does that sound familiar? How many times do you make that excuse? Or perhaps you say, “I’m too tired” or “I haven’t got time.” I am now thankful that I did go since I have managed to stay healthy and in good shape as a result. You would be amazed at how many people say to me, ”You’re so lucky to have a figure like that,” when, in fact, luck has little to do with it. It’s true that I have never been drastically overweight, but that is because I have always watched what I’ve eaten and have exercised regularly. I am as predisposed as most people to gaining weight, particularly since I have grown older. However, it’s not just my figure—my skin and hair really suffer if I eat greasy foods and don’t work out. I feel grumpy and lethargic and lose the motivation to want to exercise, which, of course, makes the situation worse.

Exercise can help us in so many ways. Weight loss is just one benefit, although it is perhaps the most visible. There are, however, many psychological benefits, including being better able to cope with stress; being less likely to suffer from depression; being able to recover more quickly from illness—and so the list goes on.

The beauty of exercise is that the benefits are so long lasting. If you work out for an hour in the morning, the benefits you generate will keep on working for hours afterward. Your metabolic rate will increase, which means you will burn more calories—including fat. Your heart and other muscles will adapt to the new demands and will make themselves stronger—this also requires more calories. Your circulation and digestive system will also benefit, and all this will happen while you go about your daily tasks. It reminds me of a commercial on television for a mouthwash. In the first shot, you see a man getting ready for work, brushing his teeth and using the mouthwash. A few minutes later, after another commercial, up pops the same man supposedly later in the day at work. He smiles and says, “It’s still working.” A few minutes later, after yet another ad, the same man appears in the evening scene with the same comment, “It’s still working.” The benefits are still being achieved hours after the event has taken place—it’s exactly the same with exercise.

It’s not just the energy cost of the exercise that is important—that is, how many calories you burn up while actually working out—it’s how many calories you need to burn just to stay alive. If you are overweight, there is visible evidence that you are eating more than you need. If you exercise regularly, however, that daily requirement—the number of calories you need to stay alive and healthy—will increase as you replace lost muscle tissue, and you really will burn more calories 24 hours per day, even while you sleep. That’s one kind of exercise we all have to find time for.

Good health and the prevention of disease are basic human needs. We invest huge sums of money trying to buy health, when we actually have most of the answers completely free of charge. With regular exercise you can extend your life span by several years, not to mention drastically improve your quality of life. Think ahead for a moment. If you cannot stand up from a chair unaided, then you cannot get off the toilet unaided. This means that your chances of living at home and not being institutionalized when you get older are slim because your muscles and heart will have weakened so much due to inactivity that you will no longer be able to look after yourself. Exercise is not just about losing weight; it is a free prescription for a healthy body.

Finding Your Way to Exercise

With what do you associate the word “exercise”? Most people who don’t exercise associate it with pain or discomfort. For some the mere mention of the word sends shivers down the spine, conjuring up visions of cross-country runs and high school gym classes. I can remember several less than pleasant exercise experiences at school: playing hockey with sticks that left me with bruises up to my knees; defending a goal against an attacker who was so much taller than I that she almost stepped on me as she went past; spending an hour or more serving tennis balls into the net, driving my opponent into a rage.

Despite all this, however, I was very fortunate in that even though I hated all the outdoor sports, once I was in the warm and cozy gymnasium—with soft crash mats and lots of ropes and poles to swing around on—I loved it. The result of finding an activity I really enjoyed was that I started to do more of it and, before long, was training regularly and entering competitions. The moral of this story is quite obvious—you have to find some kind of activity that you enjoy, or you won’t stick to it. You need to choose a form of exercise that you can do without dread. If you find something you are good at, you will want to do it more—it’s human nature. Your motivation will also increase after a month or so as you start to see and feel the benefits.

You may find that you prefer to exercise with someone else or in a group setting. Look in your local paper for details of fitness classes in your area. It doesn’t have to be aerobics; there are lots of different types of classes. It will not necessarily matter which one you choose—all exercise has a very important part to play if you are serious about losing weight.

The fitness industry is constantly changing. We are learning more about the body all the time, and as we learn more about how the body adapts to exercise, we are able to design safer training programs. It is vital, therefore, that instructors are up-to-date on the latest information. Good instructors will regularly attend seminars and training courses to make sure that the information they are giving is correct.

Of course, you don’t have to go to an exercise class to have a good workout. There are lots of other alternatives, and what is offered in a class may not suit everyone. For example, some people would benefit from activity levels that are not strenuous or not particularly long in duration. It is certainly not compulsory to experience the “high” sensation that some people get from exercising to the point of near exhaustion. It’s important to remember that most people don’t actually like the feeling of being hot and sweaty with aching limbs. What they do like, however, is the feeling of satisfaction and well-being they experience after they have exercised, a feeling that can last for several hours. You’ll find a list of alternatives to classes in the following chapter—choose whatever’s right for you.

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How Fit is Fit?

Some time ago, I gave a talk called “Why Exercise?” to groups consisting mostly of women. I began each talk by discussing the definition of fitness, and the different groups came up with their own definitions of what it actually means. Overall each group had very similar ideas. These included:

1) Being able to get through the day without feeling shattered Having enough energy to do the housework and play with the children

2) Being able to walk to work and use the stairs instead of the elevator

3) Having enough energy to walk the dog without getting out of breath .

All of these are very accurate definitions of fitness and describe what fitness means to each individual. What would your definition of fitness be?

Having discussed the merits of being fit, I then asked the women (and some men) to write down the name of someone they could think of who was fit. Their suggestions included Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Jordan, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and many other similar figures. These are all elite athletes, people who, through very intensive training, have become the best in the world. I then asked them to look again at their original definitions of fitness, and together we went through the list and asked the questions: “Were these athletes fit enough to get through the day without feeling shattered?” “Could they walk the dog without getting out of breath?” The answer to both these questions was clearly ”yes,” but most important, did these athletes actually need to be as fit as they were in order to do these everyday things? The answer was, of course, “no.”

Many people today seem to have the preconceived idea that fitness is something unachievable. When I talk about fitness, I am talking about the following: a body that is healthy enough to be able to withstand disease; a body that can recover quickly from minor illness; a body that allows its owner freedom to complete everyday tasks without the restrictions of breathlessness and discomfort.

The human body is nothing short of a miracle. I have been designing workouts and studying nutrition for more than 15 years, and yet it still astounds me that the body uses so many interrelated and complicated systems in order to function. In addition to this, I have seen people literally change their lives and their health—not to mention their shapes—just by training their bodies and teaching them to improve their efficiency. There is no piece of machinery in the world that has this ability to improve itself by training, but the human body can. The secret is quite simple—challenge your body to work slightly harder than it does already.

How many of us could recite our 13 times table if asked? I certainly couldn’t because I have only been programmed to recite my tables up to 12. Your body has the same limitations—it will function only according to the demands you place on it and no more. If you don’t exercise regularly and don’t challenge your heart and muscles, they will become smaller and weaker because your body thinks they are not needed. All you need to do to reverse this process is to start to place gentle demands on your body’s systems. If you do this regularly, your body will get stronger and improve itself in order to adapt to the new demands. The heart will get stronger and pump more blood, and the muscle fibers will get stronger to give you more strength. In fact, muscle fibers can even get longer to allow you more flexibility.

The good news is that you don’t have to work very hard for these miraculous changes to occur. You will, in fact, reap the most benefit in the first few weeks of training. Someone who has never exercised can improve fitness levels by a staggering 25 to 35 percent in the first few weeks. You will start to feel fitter because you will be teaching your body to use more of the oxygen you are breathing to help provide you with energy.

Putting the Fat Away

Fat is essential. We all need a certain amount of fat in order to protect our organs, and it also forms a vital part of many hormones, our brain and many other cells. We all have essential fat. There is, however, a marked difference between the way in which men and women store their fat.

Women were originally designed to be able to reproduce, so Mother Nature gave us extra storage sites for fat—on the breasts, hips and thighs—in order that it would be readily available to supply all the nutrients required to nourish a growing baby. Unfortunately Mother Nature was rather indiscriminate when dishing out these supplies; she didn’t account for the fact that not all women choose to have children or for the fact that after we’ve had our families,we don’t need these extra stores anymore. Many women struggle for years to get rid of a bulge that is, in fact, specifically designed to be there. They just don’t understand why they can’t get rid of it. The truth is, we can reduce these bulges quite drastically, but if that’s where our fat cells are located, we can never eliminate them completely.

What you eat and whether or not you exercise are not the only factors that determine how you look; genetics also plays a key role. It is generally accepted that we lay down or fill our fat cells during three stages in our lives. The first is while we are in the womb, and obviously we have no control over that because it is dependent on the genetic makeup we have been given by our parents. The second stage is the first 12 months of life. Again this is outside our individual control and dependent on what we are fed. The third and final stage, however, takes place during the “growth spurt” years, usually our early teens. This we do have more control over—but how many of us really thought that far ahead when we were spending our dinner money on a bag of chips and a can of soda? (Recent research has also shown that obese people can stimulate fat cells to multiply further.)

So when many of us reach adulthood unhappy about the way we look, we think we can change a pattern in just a few weeks or months that has taken years to develop. No, permanently changing body composition takes time, dedication and acceptance of what you are realistically able to achieve.

If, during all three stages, we have developed more fat cells than are necessary (remember that some fat is essential), it does not mean that they have to be filled with fat. Think of your fat cells as tiny sacks that take up almost no room at all when they are empty but lots of room when they are full. If you look at your mother and see that she stores most of her fat on her thighs, then the chances are that you will, too. However, you don’t have to store as much. That will depend on what you eat and how much you exercise. Genetics determines where your fat cells are located—but you determine what and how much you put in them.

There have been many theories about why women have evolved the way they have. The body has an essential need for the fuel that comes from the foods we eat—it’s common sense. In this day and age, most of us are fortunate enough to live in an environment in which the food supply is never in question. We always know that food is available. If we take a look back at how we evolved, however, we see that it wasn’t always quite so simple.

The most important benefits you will achieve from the articles of this site—if you follow the recipes and the exercises—are the benefits to your health. You will have more energy; you will be stronger; your circulation will improve (which may improve your skin and your hair); and you will be able to really live life to the fullest, and probably live longer. You will also lose fat, and this will change how you look—but that is an added bonus.

Think health first.