October 7th, 2009
Let me get one thing out of the way before I begin this blog post, I hate running. There, I said it. I do it because I know I should (and I tell my clients to do it, so I try not to be a hypocrite), but I really don’t enjoy doing it. Make me lift a heavy weight a bunch of times with any sort of lift, but please don’t make me run 10 miles. That is why I have come to love interval training. You can do interval training for half of the time and get better results than if you had spent the entire time running at a steady pace. It seems like a win to me, half the time and better results.
A Quick Summary of Interval Training:
Interval training is literally breaking your cardio workout (and it can be done with anything, not just running) into smaller fragments of time. These smaller fragments of time can range anywhere from 15 seconds to 2 minutes. Once you’ve determined your interval time, you will go hard for one interval then immediately follow it by going easy for one interval. That is to say, if you choose 30 seconds as your interval time you would run hard (around 90-95 percent of your top speed) for 30 seconds and follow that by jogging (35-50 percent of your top speed) and you would repeat this process. Naturally if you choose a longer interval time you would want your hard run to be a bit further away from your top speed so that you can maintain it for the entire interval. Working out this way gets your heart, lungs, and muscles all working extremely hard for the duration of the hard interval, they then get some active recovery time during your easy interval.
OK, what is the catch?
Here is the kicker with interval training; if you want it to be highly effective the hard intervals have to be hard. You should be pushing your body to its limits and that is never a fun feeling. The good news is that you only have to work hard for a short period of time and then you get some active rest to catch your breath. The better news is that you will be done with your workout sooner than if you went for a steady state long run. The best news is that the effects of interval training will stay in your body after you stop training for the day. Your lungs will be drawing in more oxygen, your body will secrete more human growth hormone which develops muscles and keeps you body looking younger, and your metabolism will be elevated. One important note is that you need to have a certain base level of aerobic capability before you start interval training. If you haven’t been running or doing cardio work for awhile, take some time to build up a base level of ability before you start interval training.
Tags: Exercise, Fitness, HIIT, interval training, Oregon, Personal Trainers, Personal Training, Portland, running, Weight loss
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September 22nd, 2009
Fall is almost here and once again the TV networks have unleashed another batch of shows designed to keep us glued to the couch. This year marks the 8th season of NBC’s The Biggest Loser, and as a trainer it always leaves me conflicted. On the one hand, it truly has a great message about trying to lose weight and that everyone has the power to change their lives. On the other hand, it sets up unrealistic expectations for viewers at home who want to see the same results as contestants on the show. In full disclosure, I should note that I am not a regular viewer of the show (I generally am not a big fan of reality TV) but I do occasionally watch episodes out of professional curiosity. If The Biggest Loser has ever inspired you to lose weight and start a path to a healthier life, let me offer you a hearty congratulations and say that the show has done a lot of good for viewers.
Viewers watching The Biggest Loser will see the contestants lose massive amounts of weight on a weekly basis and be inspired. Unfortunately it sets up extremely unrealistic expectations for most anyone in the real world. For starters, the contestants work out between 4 and 6 hours per day! Most people, with the exception of some avid gym rats don’t spend 6 hours working out in a week (Personally, I recommend to my clients to spend 3 hours in the gym lifting weights and at least 3 hours of some form of cardio per week). To be perfectly fair, most people can’t spend that much time working out every day. The majority of us have these little things called jobs, family, and friends that make it so that we can’t spend all our time working out. We should realize that this is OK, and that we all deserve to have a life outside of the gym (in fact, that’s why we exercise!). The next problem with the expectations that The Biggest Loser sets is the gross amount of weight that contestants lose every week. We regularly see loses of 15-25 lbs during the first few weeks of the season and think to ourselves, if that guy can lose that much weight why can’t I lose just 2 lbs per week? The answer is that all of the contestants on The Biggest Loser are morbidly obese and the percentage of body weight lost is not as unrealistic as the sheer amount of lbs they lost. If a 360 lb contestant loses 16 lbs in a week, they have lost 4.4% of their body weight (still an unrealistically high goal). Finally, there is all of the off camera help that contestants on The Biggest Loser receive. They have professional chefs there to cook them healthy, nutritious meals, a whole staff of doctors and on-site EMTs to monitor the contestants to make sure that they are doing everything in a medically safe fashion, and a team of trainers who make sure that every last second they spend working out is used efficiently. Most people do not have that immense support staff to help them achieve the weight loss that is seen on the show. You can help yourself by hiring a trainer, talking to your physician, and hiring a nutrition coach (many trainers also double as nutrition coaches, but make sure that they understand your goals and provide a realistic diet plan), but you won’t have the 24 hour access to them that contestants on The Biggest Loser have.
All that being said, I want to wish the best of luck to anyone who has been inspired by The Biggest Loser and I hope that you find yourself on the path to a healthier and happier you. I also want to wish the best of luck to the contestants on The Biggest Loser, even though they probably will never see this post. You have been given an amazing opportunity and I hope you realize how blessed you are to get the advantages you will receive as a contestant. As always, I wish everyone the best of luck in their journey of weight loss and a happier and healthier life!
Tags: Diet, Exercise, Fitness, Gyms, Oregon, Personal Trainers, Personal Training, Portland, The Biggest Loser, TV, Weight loss
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September 10th, 2009
When we think about our health and how we are doing, we often think about one number above everything else. That number that everyone dreads is weight. We hear report after report about Americans being overweight and our doctors telling us that we need to lose some pounds. While I’m not going to disagree with the statement that America is overweight and that most people do need to lose weight, I am disagreeing with our obsession with this number. The more important number to focus on is inches. 1 lb of fat has a greater volume than 1 lb of muscle (about 18% more volume). Therefore if I were to show you two men, both of whom way exactly 160 lbs but one of them has 12% body fat and the other one has 25% body fat, the man with 12% body fat would look fairly fit and athletic where the man with 25% body fat would look pudgy and overweight. As a culture, we are far to influenced by how much we weigh even if we look height/weight proportionate.
Many of my clients come in looking to lose weight as their primary goal. After talking to them for awhile, I often ask them if they are actually looking to lose those pounds or if they simply want to appear fitter. I give them the following anecdote; if I had a magic wand that could instantly take off 10 lbs of body fat but add 10 lbs of lean muscle mass, would you be happy with the results? I have yet to encounter a client or potential client who told me, “No, I need the bathroom scale to read 10 lbs less than it does right now!” Every single person I’ve talked to has told me that they would be happy to lose the 10 lbs of fat and gain 10 lbs of muscle, even though their weight would remain the same. Why is this? Because if you lose 10 lbs of fat and gain 10 lbs of muscle, you will appear thinner and more in shape!
One very important number you can judge your health by with inches is your Waist to Hip Ratio (WHR). WHR is a ratio, shown to be a good predictor of possible cardiovascular problems, such as heart attack, stroke, or other vascular disease, in both men and women. To find your WHR, if you are a man measure the waist at the navel and hips at the tip of the hip bone and if you are a woman measure the waist midway between the bottom of the ribs and the top of the hip bone and hips at the widest point between the hips and buttocks. Below is a link to a great online calculator for WHR which can help interpret what your number means!
http://www.dietandfitnesstoday.com/waist-to-hip-ratio.php
Tags: Exercise, Fitness, Inches, Oregon, Personal Trainers, Personal Training, Portland, Waist to Hip Ratio, Weight loss, WHR
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September 2nd, 2009
Exercise makes us feel good. The basic act of using our muscles releases chemicals into our bodies that make us feel better. When we exercise regularly we have more energy and are generally more positive. We develop trimmer and more muscular physiques when we stick to an exercise plan. In fact, exercise has been shown in studies to be just as or more effective than many depression medications. Exercise makes us feel good. The question is, if exercise makes us feel so good and does all these wonderful things for our bodies, why do we often “forget” to go to the gym or stop doing our exercise routine? The answer is that during the time we are actually exercising, we don’t feel so good. The act of straining our muscles and making our heart beat faster is an uncomfortable feeling. Exercise makes us feel good later; we want to feel good now. All too often we don’t think about how we will feel after, we aren’t willing to go through a little bit of sweat and work to get to that feeling. Sitting on the couch and watching a rerun of the Simpsons will make us feel OK right now and afterwards we can still feel OK. Going to the gym and doing a workout will make us feel tired and sweaty, but afterwards we will feel much better. All too often in our society we are choosing to simply feel OK and not work towards feeling better. We want instant gratification, and losing weight and gaining muscle is not an instant process. Both take time and energy, time and energy that we are not willing to spend.
This same process also applies in reverse. That extra drink at the bar will lead to a dreadful hangover in the morning, but we don’t think about the morning when we order it. We are thinking about keeping our buzz going and that is the only thing that matters. The next morning we often think, “Ugh, I’m never going to drink again” or “That was such a bad idea, why did I do that?” It isn’t that we are unaware of the fact that if you drink a lot of alcohol the next morning you will have a headache and possible nausea, we merely choose to feel better right now than 8 hours down the line. This same thought process works for what we eat as well. We know that the bag of Doritos will be going straight to our thighs, yet at the instant we are eating them all we are thinking is “these are some tasty chips!” We are willing to feel worse later to feel better now.
Now that we are aware of the problem, the logical step is to find a solution. The easiest solution is to make exercise fun. Get a workout buddy who you can laugh with while you work out (and as an added bonus they can keep you accountable for staying in your exercise plan). Work with a personal trainer who knows all sorts of different exercises that are more fun and interesting than your standard “Bench, Curl, Squat” workouts. Go out and play a sport like basketball or ultimate Frisbee, just make sure that you keep moving so that your heart rate is constantly elevated and you aren’t just standing around. If you have a dog, make jogging with your dog part of your routine and soon Fido will be reminding you that you have to exercise. The most important thing is to find a way that you do not dread working out, because if you do you won’t go. If you don’t go you won’t get results, and if you don’t get results you won’t feel gratified. We like feeling gratified. Let’s make sure that we feel that way at the gym!
Tags: Exercise, Fitness, Gyms, Oregon, Personal Trainers, Personal Training, Portland
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August 26th, 2009
As a personal trainer I am often asked, “What is the easy way to get fit?” Often what the person is meaning is, “How can I look good quickly with little to no effort?” Unfortunately the answer to the question they are really asking is that you can’t lose weight or gain muscle through some magic pill or one single exercise. Luckily there is a better answer to “what is the easy way to get fit” and it is four simple words, proper diet and exercise. I know that when people hear this answer they tend to cringe and think, “That isn’t the answer I was looking for!” However, despite the challenges of maintaining a proper diet and making time to exercise every day, it is the easiest way to get in shape. The hard paths are the ones that are destined to fail; the quick fix diet programs and exercise routines that promise life changing results in no time. To keep trying these trying these quick fix solutions is one way road to frustration and disappointment. Let’s talk about the two key components of getting into shape.
Proper Diet:
When people hear the word diet they tend to conjure up all sorts of negative connotations involving eating nothing but leafy greens and feeling hungry all the time. The word diet gets a rather bad rap, when really all it means is the foods that we eat. All of us are “on a diet” so to speak, so long as you are consuming any amount of food. A “proper diet” is merely making sure that we have balance in what we eat. The basic recommended daily allocation of your calories should be as follows: 45-65% Carbohydrates, 10-35% Proteins, and 20-35% Fats. I know that a lot of people who have been following the Atkins diet and other fad diets will look at those numbers and scoff, however if you are trying live a healthy and sustainable lifestyle these are the guidelines you should be following. Fad diets will be discussed in a later posting. The other part of a proper diet is to make sure you are not over consuming. You need to eat the right amount of food for you. A good calorie calculator is available here, http://calorieneedscalculator.com/. There is a simple equation when it come to our bodies and weight, if total calories consumed > total calories burned then weight will increase, if total calories consumed < total calories burned then weight will decrease. There is no pill, device, or diet that can change this equation. If you are aiming to lose 1 pound of fat per week, then you need to have a total calorie deficit of 3,500 calories per week or 500 calories per day. While that may seem like a lot of calories, the best way to approach it is to split it between both diet and exercise. Eating 250 less calories a day and working to burn 250 extra calories per day makes 500 seem like a much more manageable number. And that brings us to the second key to getting fit and being healthy, exercise.
Exercise:
Exercise can be a scary proposition for some people and there are all sorts of mental barriers that prevent us from exercising as much as we should. For some people it’s not knowing what to do when they get to a gym and being intimidated by all the people lifting weights. For others it’s thinking that they don’t have any time to exercise because of their job, their spouse, or their kids. While I am not encouraging anyone to neglect their relationships with any of those people, I will tell you that once you get into an exercise routine you will find that you have more energy than you previously did and can therefore improve your quality at your job or with your spouse and/or kids. Also, spending time exercising does not mean you have to be by yourself. Working out with your spouse or going for family walks/runs/bike rides are great ways of spending quality time together that will strengthen bonds while helping the whole family get into better shape. Being intimidated by all of the machines in a gym is also no excuse not to exercise. Personal trainers are a great resource to learn about what each machine does and how to spice up your exercise routine. It is also OK to go up to somebody who is training while they are resting between sets and ask them about what they are doing and why they are doing it. Somehow in our culture it has become taboo to talk to strangers, but the best way to learn about new ideas is to talk to people. Don’t be afraid to get off the treadmill and work with weights. The most effective way to burn calories is through lifting weights and building muscle. Create a challenge for yourself by setting goals and work to attain them. Better yet, find a partner to train with and have a competition to see who can reach their goals first. It is important to look forward to going to the gym, not dreading it, because if you aren’t enjoying yourself that rerun of The Simpsons will be a lot more appealing and you’ll be headed down the road to frustration once again.
Tags: Diet, Exercise, Fitness, Gyms, Oregon, Personal Trainers, Personal Training, Portland, Weight loss
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August 11th, 2009
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
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