Good Foods and Bad Foods

How do you tell the difference between a good food and a bad one? The answer is that there are no bad foods. I believe in everything in moderation. One chocolate chip cookie isn’t going to do you any harm at all; it’s the rest of the box of cookies that really does the damage! If you can eat one and be satisfied, great—lucky you! Most of us mere mortals cannot resist the temptation and just have to delve deeper into the package.

There are, of course, healthy foods and unhealthy foods, and if you educate your stomach and palate and get used to low-fat foods, even chocolate loses its appeal—I promise! Speaking as someone who used to devour two or three chocolate bars a day, I always considered myself lucky that I rarely gained weight; that is, until I got to 30, when, it seems, all my bad habits finally caught up with me. Suddenly I had to start watching what I ate, and chocolate was the first thing to go. It took me about four weeks to stop wanting a chocolate fix, but now I don’t even miss it. I have strayed a couple of times, only to find that I still can’t have just one chocolate on its own. So for me the only way to do it is to not have any at all. As for other so-called bad foods such as fast foods and french fries, if you have them only once in a while, you won’t suddenly put inches on your thighs after just one meal. If you develop a taste for them and have them regularly, however, the inches will start to pile on.

Are You Pushing Yourself Too Hard?

You want to strengthen your muscles to help you in everyday life, so you don’t need to lift heavy weights and suffer resulting pain. With aerobic exercises, you should always feel comfortable and able to do more; with strength exercises, you should feel really challenged by the end of each set. When you do the exercises—although I have suggested the number of repetitions you should do—you may need to vary this to suit your own ability. If you are doing ten repetitions of something and then stopping, that represents one set. At the end of the set, if you feel as if you could have done a few more, then you have not worked hard enough. If you don’t really challenge the muscle, it won’t improve. If ten is the absolute maximum you can do and the last one is painful, then you are working too hard and should stop at eight or nine. complete it properly. You should avoid this stage since your muscles are likely to be very sore a day or two later and you may injure yourself. It is very important when doing strength work that you work to fatigue, not failure.

There is a difference between fatigue and failure. Fatigue means that the muscle feels tired after you have completed the set and that you feel you have really achieved something. This is the level you want to aim for. Failure means that the last exercise (repetition) in the set was painful and that you couldn’t complete it properly. You should avoid this stage since your muscles are likely to be very sore a day or two later and you may injure yourself. It is very important when doing strength work that you work to fatigue, not failure.

The toning exercises I have devised can easily be done at home. They should take approximately 15 minutes or less, including some warm-up and stretching exercises. There are two programs, although some of the exercises are the same in both. The programs have been carefully designed to balance muscle strength evenly to promote good posture.

Get In Shape For Summer In 2 Weeks!

Are you a traveler who is always rushing from here to there? Are you feeling mentally-drained, experiencing insomnia, or overeating at fast foods at the airport? Do you find it difficult to overcome the discomfort and tiredness of traveling?

This book was written as a survival guide for all the fellow travelers who want to claim control over their busy lives by a salesman who clocks over 200,000 air miles a year. In this useful book you will learn:

1) 10 amazing ways to find exercise where there is none.
2) How to lose fat and have fun at the same time by being more active on the road.
3) How to exercise without having to go to a gym.
4) The secrets of a super-fit salesman
5) Fitness at 40,000 feet
6) How to run two miles in a hotel room
7) De-stressing techniques which you can use anywhere and anytime.

Buy now at a introductory price of just $25USD! We can’t promise that the price will stay there forever!

Choose Your Exercise

Because of the obvious limitations of this article, I am going to suggest that you choose your aerobic exercise from the following list. Choose two aerobic activities and do these twice per week. Make sure you use your exercise chart to schedule them so that you don’t keep putting them off. Think of your exercise sessions as appointments that you must keep.

Power Walking. This involves both taking longer strides than you do when you walk normally and moving your arms as well as your legs, so that you can build up some momentum.

Jogging. Do this at a comfortable level that you can maintain. If you start to get breathless and unable to speak, reduce to a power walk. Make sure you wear some good running shoes, particularly if you are running on a concrete surface.

Swimming. When swimming, make sure that you use your legs as well as your arms. Try keeping your arms by your sides and just using your legs for some of the time. It doesn’t really matter which stroke you use; choose the most comfortable for you, or better still, vary it every few lengths.

Cycling. Cycle at a comfortable level and try to choose a route that you can manage without stopping. Make sure you know what is around the corner. It may feel great going down a hill, but don’t forget that you will have to get up the other side. Always wear a safety helmet and make sure that your bike is in good working order before you leave.

Stationary Cycling. This is one of the few workouts where it is possible to take your pulse rate fairly accurately. Pedal for at least five minutes, until you can feel you are perspiring and slightly breathless. Now take your pulse to see how hard you are working, using the maximum training heart rate guidelines. If you get bored, try putting the bike in front of the television and watching a video or a favorite program.

Stair Climbing. Step machines are relatively new, but very valuable, additions to home exercise equipment. As with stationary bikes, you can place them in front of the television or exercise while listening to music. They are available with frames to hold on to, or in smaller versions that have just the footpads. If possible, go for the larger variety, as the range of leg movements is greater. If not, make sure you try to use your arms as well.

Bench Stepping. Bench stepping involves stepping up and down on a small bench. Always choose a step that has adjustable heights since you may need to start out at four or six inches, as opposed to the maximum height of eight inches. Most steps come with an instructional video—if your step doesn’t, you should buy one in order to ensure you are using a good technique. Although the step has been associated with knee injuries, improper step techniques have been responsible in almost all cases. Practiced properly, it is an excellent form of cardiovascular exercise. You could also join a step class, but make sure that the instructor teaches you properly.

Everyday Exercise

It is important not to get too bogged down with worrying about which exercise burns the most fat while you are working out. It is the total number of calories you burn in just staying alive that will influence how much or how little fat you burn. Only a small percentage of the calories you burn comes from exercise, compared with the amount burned just keeping you alive.

The exercise programs set out in this book include both aerobic and anaerobic exercises in order to stimulate the fat cells into releasing more fat (see Chapter 4), to replace muscle tissue and to increase the total amount of fat calories burned throughout the day—and night. What is vital, however, is that you adapt the program to suit you. For example, when choosing your aerobic activity, it is important to find something that you like to do and are able to do for at least 20 minutes—more if possible. You may find that power walking is a comfortable yet challenging workout for you if walking at a normal pace is not enough and running is too much. When power walking, you need to take much longer strides and use your arms and upper body to help you with the momentum. You should use as many of your muscles as possible and not just your legs.

Your body does not know the difference between providing energy for vacuuming and providing energy for an aerobics class. When the muscles start to work, the brain receives messages telling it to increase the supply of oxygen. This is the responsibility of the heart, which then has to pump faster to meet the increased demands.

You can, therefore, make a considerable difference in the amount of calories you burn simply by being more active in everyday life.

How Hard Should You Work?

One of the biggest areas of controversy concerns how hard you should work in order to maximize the amount of fat you burn while you are working out. The truth is that whatever form of exercise you do, you will be helping your body to burn fat, not only while you are exercising but all the time. One school of thought is that if you work too hard, you won’t burn fat. This is based on the principle that because it takes a long time for the fat to be taken out of the fat cells, into the bloodstream, into the muscle and then finally broken down, you need to exercise for quite a long time in order to stimulate this process. In other words, by the time the fat has been taken to the muscle, you will have already finished exercising. There is a lot of scientific evidence to support this, and in principle it is true.

To maximize the amount of fat you burn while you are working out, you should aim to keep going for longer to give your fat cells more time to release their fat. You should also remember that if you do this regularly, you will be training your fat cells to release fat into the bloodstream to be used as fuel. In order to do this, you will need to keep the level of exercise fairly low to moderate—after all, Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis could not run as fast over 1,500 meters as he does over 100 meters. In general terms, you should feel breathless but not exhausted.

There are several ways in which you can estimate how hard you are working in order to see whether or not you are burning fat. The first is to take your pulse rate while you are at the hardest point of the exercise. The problem with this, however, is that if you are moving around (jogging or swimming, for example), it is almost impossible to take your pulse accurately. You will also need to calculate in advance what your maximum pulse rate should be.

Obviously you don’t want to work at 100 percent. Research has shown that when we work at approximately 65 percent we burn the most fat. Sixty-five percent of 190 is 123. Therefore, if a 30-year-old reaches a level where the heart is beating 123 times per minute, he or she is likely to be in the “fat-burning zone”: what you need to do is to pedal away at a level that is comfortable and sustainable. Remember: It takes longer to start burning fat than just glycogen alone, so start gently and gradually increase the time you spend on the activity, until you can work at a comfortable level for 20 or 30 minutes. Rest assured, you will be burning fat. You will also be improving your cardiovascular system and reducing your risk of heart disease.

The second school of thought is completely different, but also correct. It is based on the total amount of calories burned during exercise. Having established that you burn a higher percentage of calories from fat if the level is low to moderate, we now need to look at the total number of calories burned overall during low- versus high-intensity exercise.

For every individual, there is a particular point at which we can no longer continue to work aerobically—that is, supply oxygen at the rate it is required. At this point, we then start to use the anaerobic energy system, which does not burn fat and in turn produces lactic acid in the muscle. This causes muscle soreness, which eventually stops the muscles from contracting. Whether or not you should walk or run to burn more fat, therefore, depends largely on your fitness level and on how long you are able to exercise.

In addition to this, you should remember that the total amount of calories burned will vary from one individual to another, according to the total body weight and the amount of lean body mass. One pound of muscle will require approximately 40 calories per day in order to function—excluding exercise. The more you exercise, the more calories the muscle will require—not just when you are exercising but throughout the day and night, as it repairs itself and starts to grow stronger. The result is a higher percentage of muscle on our bodies, so we burn more calories when we work out. This in turn means we burn more calories throughout the day and night, and so the cycle goes on. All these extra calories have to come from somewhere, and provided you are not eating more than you need, they will come from the body’s fat stores—the perfect way to lose weight.

Move For Better Fitness

Are you a traveler who is always rushing from here to there? Are you feeling mentally-drained, experiencing insomnia, or overeating at fast foods at the airport? Do you find it difficult to overcome the discomfort and tiredness of traveling?

This book was written as a survival guide for all the fellow travelers who want to claim control over their busy lives by a salesman who clocks over 200,000 air miles a year. In this useful book you will learn:

1) 10 amazing ways to find exercise where there is none.
2) How to lose fat and have fun at the same time by being more active on the road.
3) How to exercise without having to go to a gym.
4) The secrets of a super-fit salesman
5) Fitness at 40,000 feet
6) How to run two miles in a hotel room
7) De-stressing techniques which you can use anywhere and anytime.

Buy now at a introductory price of just $25USD! We can’t promise that the price will stay there forever!

It’s Never Too Late

People often tell me that they are too old to exercise, but that is simply not true. Provided you are in good general health, there is no reason whatsoever that you cannot begin a gentle exercise program and reap the same benefits as someone younger. There is little or no difference between the improvements gained by elderly people starting exercise programs and those achieved by people in their 20s.

In a recent study, scientific researchers wanted to test this theory. They went to their local residential care center and asked for some volunteers to start an exercise program. They were met initially with cries of horror from the staff, but once they’d persuaded them that it was all perfectly safe and that the participants would be very well supervised, they did manage to get a few residents to join in. These residents felt that they had nothing better to do since they were only sitting around anyway. The program began very gently with some mobility work in a chair and, over the course of a few months, progressed to include some strength work to try to regain some of the muscle tissue lost due to years of inactivity. At the same time, similar exercise programs were carried out with college students. The workouts were adapted to their increased level of fitness, and both groups worked at approximately 80 percent of their maximum potential.

When the results were compared at the end of the program, it was noted that the residents had dramatically improved their quality of life. They were more active during the day; they were more likely to play table tennis and go for walks rather than just sit around all day; and their medication requirements had gone down—in some cases, quite drastically. In addition to this, the results of the original test—which was to see whether or not they could gain the same improvements in muscle tissue as the younger students—showed clearly that they could. The replacement of lost muscle tissue was far more significant to the residents than it was to the younger group because it literally changed their lives. When the researchers completed their study, they were persuaded to stay and design a much larger program for the other residents, who had seen the changes in those who had taken part and wanted the same benefits themselves. The oldest resident who took part in the study was in his 90s.

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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