Life in Your Years Blog: Health, Finance, & More

Now that Thanksgiving is over, most of us are thinking of the upcoming Christmas holiday (especially we teachers that get 16 days off!). However, this time of the year is generally bad for your health. Well, perhaps I should say that the choices we often make during these days are bad for our health, which, when coupled with certain naturally occurring conditions (like winter), make matters worse. There are a few things I think we should all keep in mind as the season of holiday parties and treats approaches.

First, let me start with a little philosophy. As a Catholic, I believe that life consists of both feasting and fasting. Christmas (which, as a Church holiday, begins on December 25th) is a time of feasting. Advent, which runs roughly four weeks before Christmas, is generally a time of restraint and simplicity, and in some traditions, fasting. So keep in mind as I share some of these ideas, that I most certainly believe in both fasting and feasting properly!

- The first pitfall to watch out for is gainig too much weight around the holidays. The average person gains 7 to 10 pounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is really quite a lot of weight to pack on in such a short time, and stresses the body physically and mentally. We have compiled ways to lose and maintain weight that are applicable any time of the year, including the holidays.

- The second pitfall is holiday-related stress. Money, travel, family visits, etc, all create stress, and this is in addition to the daily stresses we encounter. Studies show one solution to stress is to simply smile. Using the facial muscles necessary for smiling tells the brain that it is happy. You may look crazy randomly smiling, but you’ll be happier.

- The third pitfall is winter depression. Winter is a rough time for a lot of people. Add holiday stress, and holiday eating to this, and many people are less than joyful around Christmas. One way to beat the winter blues is to get some sunlight. As simple as it sounds, it is true: sunlight triggers the brain to produce serotonin. Unlike Vitamin D, whose production requires sunlight to hit the skin during a limited range of months, simply looking in the direction of the sun with one’s eyes closed triggers serotonin production. This can even be done from the inside. In the winter, I make it a point to go to the window and soak in some sun during planning periods.

If you are prone to weight gain, it’s important to live your life lower (but not too low) than higher. And, it’s amazing how weight gain can get away from you. You work hard, you love how you look and feel, and then bingo, you’re back on the roller coaster ride of weight gain. The key I guess is to keep it a small hill since it’s much easier to get down. I personally put on about 6 pounds over the last 3 weeks and I’m trying not to make it permanent and a prelude to more.

How did it happen? I took the vacation mentality too far. My mother in law was in town for a few weeks and she can cook. Very, very well, in fact. And, she cooks in a traditional Italian way: generally healthy (I don’t eat meat which helps), but also caloric and lots of added flavor. For example, I put about a cup of cheese on a whole pizza. She put almost a cup per slice (or so it seemed). As much as I loved it, the pounds started creeping on. And, since she was visiting, I didn’t make it to the gym as much. In short, my control slipped away.

My plan is to lose it over the next few weeks now that she is gone. I’m going to miss her for a variety of reasons including her cooking. I should’ve adjusted and actually used moderation and control. This is how I typically gained weight in the past: I “go off” and never really get back on until it’s too late. Not this time, though. I’m back in the low life again, which, as those who have been overweight and lost it know, the “low” life of healthy weight is actually the high life in terms of health and confidence.

Image by Jonathan Bennett. To order prints or download high resolution images, click here.

It’s that exciting…er…dreaded time of year for many students, teachers, and parents: back to school time. Today, I am going to discuss some ways to maintain and lose weight once school starts. We also have a Weight Loss Tips and Ideas Page that contains more generally helpful weight loss ideas, most which would be effective in a back-to-school setting. You should consult a doctor before starting any weight loss plan.

When I was in high school, summer was pretty much the beginning of football season, but I did have a lot of control over my diet and activity level. Football got me into shape, and I ate pretty well at home, so the combination was good for weight loss and maintenance. My senior year, I ran a lot outside of football, so much, that I remember worrying that football would not keep me in shape nearly as well as my running would (maybe I should have joined the cross-country team!).  Either way, summer was full of good weather and possibilities, whereas once school started, I seemed to be locked into a tight and stressful schedule (more on this below).

In high school, I struggled to maintain my weight. I knew that it was a good idea to be in shape, especially if I wanted to get dates, but yet, gaining weight was so easy in high school. This was because a lot of my friends were naturally thin, with high metabolisms (not so anymore, by the way), and could eat whatever they wanted and not gain weight. I, on the other hand, had to struggle to keep the weight off. While I just mentioned that losing weight in the summer was pretty easy, once school started, I faced a lot of temptations that hurt my weight loss efforts:

- Bad lunches – the cafeteria offered little in the way of healthy choices, which made bad eating the order of the day. Packing lunches required time and effort I didn’t always have (see below).

- Stress – I got good grades in school, and enjoyed the social aspects of school as well. Nonetheless, when football was in season, school was pretty stressful for me. Basically I was busy from 7:30 AM-7:00 PM, which left a few hours in the evening to eat, catch up with family and friends, and squeeze in some alone time.  My natural response to stress was to eat more.

- Social Pressure – Like most high school kids, my social life usually involved food. Where would we go after practice? The local greasy spoon. Where would we go after games? The local pizza joint. What did we do for entertainment on the weekends? Sit around and play Super Nintendo. Obviously, I enjoyed all of these activities, but if they weren’t reigned in, the result for me was weight gain.

- Sitting Around All Day – Unfortunately, high school involves a lot of sitting, and even those among us without ADD sometimes struggle to focus when sitting still all day. We are asking kids who should be at their prime of physical activity to sit around all day.

The key to losing and maintaining weight, besides knowing *how* to lose weight is the effectively address hindrances to weight loss, i.e. situations and realities that may cause a mere lapse to turn into a relapse. So below are some ways to address the potential problems I have addressed, but obviously, each person will have different hindrances to weight loss, so be creative!

Bad lunches can be dealt with by packing a lunch. Yes, it takes time and effort, but the control you have over your lunches, both in taste and calories, is worth it. To make the job easier, I suggest planning your week’s meals before you get to the grocery story, and then buying enough food to last the entire week. This way, you aren’t scrambling each night to develop tomorrow’s meal.

Stress is rampant among all age groups. Fortunately, it is easy to deal with stress, if you are willing to try different techniques. This website has a bunch of stress relief ideas and techniques. Instead of immediately eating when you are stressed, try some of these ideas.

Social Pressure is difficult to deal with, because nobody wants to be known as the guy (or gal) who can’t ever just go out and “have fun.” First, I think it is important to realize that if being in shape means a lot to you, then you may have to sometimes not do what everybody else is doing. Fortunately, most restaurants offer healthier menu items, and if all your buddies have around is a bag of chips, then you can always limit yourself to a handful and say you just ate. Second, if you are generally doing well regarding your health plan, then allowing yourself to go off isn’t bad, and might even rev up your metabolism. People don’t get fat by going off their plan once a week; they gain weight because they go off all the time.

Sitting around for 8, 40-minute, periods is not a great way to burn calories, but there are ways to burn calories while sitting. Tapping your feet, clinching and releasing muscles, etc, all burn more calories than sitting alone. In fact, studies show that thin people tend to fidget more than fat people, so the extra little movements while sitting probably do make a difference in our daily calorie burning!

The mind is powerful, and it is apparently so powerful, that a woman who was hypnotized to believe she had gastric-bypass surgery actually is losing weight! In fact, the woman, just like those who have undergone gastric-bypass surgery, gets a sick feeling if she eats too much.

While I am not sure if I would want to undergo hypnosis to lose weight, I do believe the mind is powerful and capable of literally helping us create our own reality (have you ever noticed how it seems bad things always happen to those people who always expect it?).

Do you want to see those six-pack abs? Well, they are probably there, but they are probably buried under fat. Even though we try and try to lose weight and gain muscle, the “six-pack look” seems elusive. First, be aware that seeing a six-pack may very well involve removing some excess water off of the stomach. This can be accomplished via Water Pills (another cheap one). Second, it takes a pretty low  body fat percentage to see six-pack abs, and even those of us who are healthy, aren’t quite there. The recent issue of Men’s Health provides a diet plan by Alan Aragon that just might work to help you see those elusive ab muscles. We’ll see. It takes discipline, and is different from my current diet, but I may give it a try. Below are the steps:

1. Calculate your calories:

Aragon suggests setting your calorie goal based on your ideal weight. To do this, he provides the following formula: if you exercise 1 hour or less per week, multiply your ideal weight by 10. For every hour a week over 1 that you exercise, add another 1 to the multiplier. For example, if you exercise 3 hours a week, and your ideal weight is 150, you would take 12×150, for a daily calorie target of 1800. Yeah, that’s low, but losing that final gut fat ain’t easy!

2. Adjust your fat, protein, and carbohydrates accordingly:

Here’s where it may get a little tricky, so pay attention. Aragon advises that you consume the same amount of protein (in grams) as your ideal weight. So, in the example above, our man would consume 150 grams (600 calories) of protein per day. For fat, Aragon suggests halving that number, so our hypothetical person would shoot for 75 grams (675 calories) of fat. Carbs make up the rest, and you can figure the exact grams of carbs allowed by adding the calories from fat and protein, and then subtracting from your calorie goal. In this case, it would be 1800- (600+675)= 535 calories from carbs. Now, divide 535 by 4 (since there are 4 calories in a gram of carbs), i.e. 535/4, and you get 131 carbohydrates a day.

3. Eat Good Foods

Avoid junk like refined grains, sugary foods, etc. A diet of only 1800 calories is pretty low for an active man, but if you eat the right foods, you should get the nutrients you need (including fiber).

4. Make The Diet Work

Aragon suggests eating plenty of fruits and veggies, as well as making sure that 1 hour before, and within 1 hour after, exercising, you eat, in order to make sure you have the fuel you need.

5. Forget About the Details

(apparently after you work out the aforementioned details!)

Image has nothing to do with a six-pack, but I did lose a lot of weight by running this very hill regularly!

It can be disheartening to dieters, but it appears that we cannot actually reduce the number of fat cells within our body. So, when we lose weight we are merely decreasing the size of the set number of fat cells. However, this still leaves the cells themselves intact, waiting to be filled. This is called “fat cell theory.”

Our number of fat cells seems to be determined throughout infancy and adolescence. And, some scientists believe that this can be controlled, so that skinnier kids create fewer fat cells. Thus, they have an advantage throughout life. This may explain why so few obese children become skinny as adults.

For more info, visit this article

As mentioned in a previous post, that flab that hangs around your belly (sometimes quite literally) even after doing all the right things with diet and exercise, may be due to the body’s overproduction of cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone released by the adrenal glands as a response to chronic stress that can increase the fat around your belly (since that fat has more cortisol receptors). The bad news is that cortisol may be destroying your chance for perfect abs. The good news is that it’s not terribly hard to lower your cortisol levels (and stress).

I workout a lot and eat very healthily. In fact, I’m probably in the top 1-3% of the population in terms of my diet and fitness routine. Yet, I am also frequently stressed out as with most Americans. I started researching cortisol and have come up with the following plan to fight stress and belly flab:

1)  Practice breathing techniques throughout the day, especially during stressful situations. I’ve found Andrew Weil’s three breathing techniques, especially the second, very useful.

2) Practice chi gong (qigong) techniques throughout the day. This is a Chinese form of meditation/exercise that helps to lower stress. This site has really good information on techniques. Click on each exercise for more detail and photos. 

3) Cut back on caffeine. The body can react to caffeine by making more cortisol. I am going to drink only tea, not coffee, after noon.

4) Take phosphytidylserine (aka PS), a brain supplement that some research indicates can help lower out of control cortisol levels

I’ll let you know how the whole strategy proceeds. Numbers 1 and 2 are the areas where I’m most hopeful. Stress is the major contributor to cortisol production and I hope to get it under control for the summer beach season.

Looking for the source of your belly bulge? Ice cream? Doughnuts? Coke? Look again. It may be the screaming kids, the grumpy boss, or the constant breakdown of your car. Well, not those incidents specifically, but anything that causes stress.

The body responds to high stress by releasing the hormone cortisol which protects the body from harm by creating a fight or flight response (or anything in between). This was an adaptation from the days when we could be surprised and eaten by a tiger or today when we could be attacked by an intruder. Chronically high cortisol levels have been shown to contribute to the long term accumulation of abdominal fat.

The problem today is that while our body is not constantly responding to intruders or wooly mammoth stampedes, we are constantly dealing with low-mid level stress that can be endless, e.g. financial worries, job stress, etc. This keeps our cortisol levels high enough to keep that abdominal fat from leaving no matter how many crunches we do or hours we may spend on the cardio machine.

So, while giving up the ice cream, doughnuts, and coke are important, if you truly want to be thin and fit, especially in the belly, you also need to give up…the stress.

Article partially used for this entry: Cortisol Stress and Weight Loss

I used to think that running, especially over long distances, was the measure of a person’s athletic and fitness abilities. I’m not sure why exactly, perhaps because it seemed that good runners looked athletic. So, I would force myself to run and get bored out of my mind. Then, I’d quit running. And since running was exercise, I also quit exercise.

From a logical perspective this is called “fallacious” thinking, specifically a “straw man” argument. I setup running in my mind as the only proper exercise and when I couldn’t run, I thus, couldn’t exercise. It was silly thinking, but it truly hindered my exercise. I had to create a “clean slate” with exercise and working out and you may have to as well.

First, exercise is simply burning calories. Granted, it can be intense, moderate, or weak, but burning calories is burning calories. So, while you may burn more calories playing an intense game of squash than walking for thirty minutes, if you hate squash and don’t play it, the 100 calories you burn from walking is better than the 0 calories you burn from not playing squash (even if those who do play squash would burn 400 calories in the same amount of time).

Second, remember your age. Just because you were a basketball stud in high school doesn’t mean you need to run out and join the nearest pickup game at age 48. While that may be an excellent way to get in shape, it may also be an excellent way to get so sore the next day that you give up exercising for another 30 years. Basically, you may need to reinvent what exercise means for you. I say “may” because perhaps you can exercise the way you used to. Most of us probably can’t; if anything we don’t have time for 3 hour practices 5 days a week with games on the off days.

Finally, and related to one and two, keep an open mind. Trying new exercises will keep your routines more interesting and you’ll stop your muscles from getting used to the same old stuff (this is a good thing, btw). Plus, you may find something you actually love to do. For example, I never knew how relaxing and and exhilarating cross country skiing could be until I tried it.

Today, I actually enjoy running, at least outdoors (treadmills still bore me to tears). I admire those hardcore runners, but realize that I don’t need to be one myself.

I have been keeping Fitday records for almost 2 full years now, faithfully, and in pretty good detail. One important thing I have observed is the effect that eating a certain number of calories has on my weight. I can look at my 7, 14, or 28 day averages, and if I see certain numbers, I can almost always predict the result. Below are some calorie range averages, and what they tend to mean for me. Bear in mind that I am consistently active, getting intense aerobic exercise and lifting 4-5 days per week (and a high level of activity other days).

1800-2400 calories – I lose weight in this range. If my initial weight is high, then I can lose about 1-2 pounds a week. I may lose some muscle in the lower parts of this range, so I typically avoid going below 2000 calories when I am active.

2401-2900- I pretty much maintain my weight in this range. In fact, when I was in this range a few months ago, I don’t think I gained or lost a pound for 3-4 months (although I was gaining muscle, so I was probably losing some fat).

2901-3400 – In this range I gain. I gain slowly, but I gain. Basically, I have learned that if I start seeing a calorie figure in the low-3000 range, it is time for me to reign my eating in. If I am in this range, it usually means I am eating out too much or snacking too much at work.

3401+ – I don’t have Fitday records for a long-term average in this range, but I am guessing based on past observations that I would gain pretty quickly if my calories were averaging this range. Needless to say, I am not volunteering to be a subject in this experiment!

I am certain that your numbers will be different, but this is the beauty of Fitday and other diet tracking programs, in that you can observe trends that may be unique to you. I have pretty much carried out a nearly 2 year case study related to my diet and activity. While I admit that for most people, keeping a detailed diet and activity journal for 2 years is the height of tedium, I actually enjoy keeping such records, and the rewards are more than just intellectual inquiry: weight loss, health, and fitness!

Previously, I posted my series on twenty changes that I made that made me healthier and led to my weight loss. I’ve decided that, with summer coming up, I would start to focus specifically on my workout tips. Let me give you some background.

I was a very active child, but with the advent of the Nintendo Entertainment System that all stopped. I went from active to sedentary very quickly. However, in high school I decided that being fat and slothful wasn’t the way to popularity, so I started lifting weights and joined the football team. Football and training for it kept me in good shape, but I didn’t exactly love football. So, after high school, I lost a lot of my motivation for working out.

In college I was only a short walk away from a gorgeous state of the art workout facility. Yet, I rarely used it. Classwork and other stuff kept me busy and one of my biggest regrets is being near my heaviest weights during my college years. It seems to be fairly common since the freshman 15 (pounds) is a stereotype. I had the freshman 15, the sophomore 20, etc. My senior year, I finally got motivated and lost a lot of weight and got fit and was thin throughout most of graduate school. Still, after I got into the “real world” I let myself go again and was back on the yo yo train. It’s not a pleasant ride!

In  2005, I started at my current job as a high school teacher. Although teenagers are gaining weight at dangerous levels, by and large they are thinner and fitter than the average population. You gotta love youth! This was a constant reminder of my own fitness shortcomings and also how far I’d fallen (I had been in great shape in high school and grad school). On August 6th 2007, I decided I had had enough. I was done with the yo yo dieting and tired of being the overweight guy. A switch went off in my head and I started eating healthily and working out. And, I haven’t looked back nearly two years later.

That time has been successful, but also filled with hits and misses, especially with fitness. It took a lot of trial and error to figure out what worked for me. For the next couple of weeks, I am going to share my fitness tips on this blog to help others follow in my path. I went from a soft 169 pounds to 150 pounds of almost solid muscle. I’m not saying this to brag, just to let you know that I do have some wisdom to share. Don’t look back in five years and regret that you wasted a large chunk of your life by being fat and unhealthy. Start getting fit today. Check back here to get practical tips.

Winter is a rough time for me all around. As I get older, I hate winter more and more. Growing up, winter was almost magical: Christmas (and all associated content, including lights), snow days, warm fires, and so forth, stoked my imagination. Even though this past winter was cold and dreary to a large degree, the “greeting card” winter of my nostalgia still shapes my view of winter. These days, outside of Christmas, I can do without the winter. Seriously, the less winter, the better. I often joke that I wish the cold and snow would end at Christmas: I would like a cold and snowy Christmas, and by the middle of January, the days can warm up to the 60s as far as I’m concerned. Let me say that I can appreciate the winter on certain levels, and I will always love the “four seasons,” but winter is just too limiting.

In high school, I usually lost weight in the winter, not because winter provides any kind of real advantage (it actually may provide a disadvantage to weight loss because it drives our body into a kind of “hibernation”), but because, as I have mentioned in previous posts, winter is when my social life, which began in the fall, was revving up. I had already begun losing weight in the fall, and this continued, and even increased, in the winter. This, and the new year, provided a strong motivation to get the Y, and eat right.

These days, winter doesn’t cause me too many weight-related problems. I sometimes struggle with infections and mild mood issues, but this doesn’t directly relate to my weight. During winter, my main issue is that I have to make my exercise interesting. This is always the struggle for me in the winter. Usually, there is one effective solution to this problem: music. In high school, I had a cassette walkman. I discovered “oldies” during this time, so I would make mix tapes of oldies I got off the radio and various CDs, non-creatively titled “The Exercise Collection” 1-2. I upgraded to a discman around 2000, and in 2008, I finally got a MP3 player. Right now, I am listening to The Airborne Toxic Event, which is upbeat enough to make exercise easier. Basically, to lose weight in the winter I need to:

- Make effective use of music, to keep exercise interesting

- Vary my exercise routine enough to keep interested

- Not let winter blahs negatively affect my weight loss

- Get out on the few good days that the winter offers

Image of a kind-of-nostalgic looking photo taken by me

I have great memories of recent summers, but in high school, it was hardly my favorite season. Why would I not like a sunny, 3 month break from school? In a word, football. I enjoyed football, but it was very tough, and required a lot of commitment. We began weight-lifting and running in June, practicing in July, and we began full practices (including “two-a-days” from 7:30 AM -3:30 PM) by August. Hence, I basically had no summer “break.” Football got me in shape that is for sure, but because it was stressful on my body and mind, I tended to compensate by eating. After a 7 hour practice, nothing satisfied like a huge, greasy, meal of 2 ham-and-cheese subs, french fries, and loads of pop. For this reason, I rarely began diets or health programs in the summer during high school. The only exception is the summer before my junior year, when I continued an exercise program I began with spring bike riding. I exercised diligently with my brother Jonathan, and friend, Mike. We lifted every other day, and ran outside at the school track afterward. By the end of July, I worked my way up to running 6 miles. I continued running on Sundays (my football off-day) once school had started. I still look back fondly on those Sunday runs, as times of relaxation in the midst of busy, 12 hour, days.

In recent years, my summers have been very healthy. If I keep myself busy running, golfing, walking, swimming, and so forth, I do well in the summers. I could run every day of the week outside at local parks, whereas running inside at the Y in the winter is a huge struggle, in part because running in a circle indoors isn’t exactly my favorite situation. Summer provides so many opportunities for exercise, and the social motivation is huge because everybody wants to do stuff in the summer, including going to the beach! Summer presents its own challenges to weight loss, so to lose weight in the summer I need to:

- Get out and enjoy the weather; since I am on break as a teacher, some days I get lazy in the morning. While I love running outside, some days I need a mental kick in the pants to get out

- Get in a routine related to eating. Since I am on break, I often travel a lot during the summer, which means the eating routine I am naturally on (lower calorie, high fiber, etc) is out-of-whack. Because of this, I am tempted to eat poorly.

- Not let social times distract me from staying on a plan. I always need to remind myself that things like going to the beach, etc, are more enjoyable when I am in shape!

No, I’m not talking about chocolate, wine, cheese, meat, or anything else that experts recommend we consume in moderation. The topic of this post is exercise.

Exercise addiction is a real phenomenon and generally involves a real addiction to the act of exercising and the subordination of other activities and obligations to working out. It also usually includes an emotional component where not exercising can bring anxiety and depression. You can find out more here.

Many of our readers (all five?) may see a little bit of themselves when they read about exercise addiction. This is  something that many of us who are excited about our health probably border on. It’s probably even more true if we used to be sedentary and overweight. After all, we have to be vigilant or it’s back to the old habits (and the old health and old looks). So, we can be forgiven for being a tad obsessive, right?

A tad, yes. Certainly, a student who has to work 3 hours to understand a concept is not an addict to education just because he or she can’t learn it in 1 hour like another student. So, in this sense, many of us who used to be fat genuinely may have to put in more effort. I do get somewhat upset if my exercise routine is interrupted. It’s because I know what happens when that becomes a trend…and it ain’t pretty.

However, we all must make sure we’re not becoming addicted to exercise. Our previous habits were unhealthy and brought us down. We can’t have the same thing happen with our new habits. Exercising while injured or sick and becoming emotionally disturbed over exercise will both damage health, not advance it.

So, if the article I linked to sounds a lot like you, it may be time to pull back a little and maybe even get some help doing it. We want to live life to its fullest and exercise should help that, not hinder it.

Congressmen and women are having the same problems many Americans are having these days: gaining weight. The article I linked to blames long hours, poor food choices, economic stress, and extra workload. It’s tempting to think of these people negatively since they are politicians, but I actually felt an odd degree of sympathy. Perhaps because it’s a struggle that I’ve faced and still struggle with.

My guess is that the issues cited in the article are ones that lots of Americans face and have faced. It’s helpful to see that it’s not just the average person who is struggling. In fact, the statistics suggest that it’s every American. I also hope that as the leaders of our nation battle the bulge they will realize the value in letting ordinary Americans enjoy the same benefits they do, like good food choices (the congressional cafeteria is amazing), gym access, and nutrition consulting. And hopefully they’ll stop subsidizing crap for our schools. But, that’s another issue.

Although I disagree with a lot of what he is doing politically, I will grant that Obama is a great role model for health and fitness (except for smoking). When the media mocked him for being a gym rat, I was annoyed. If only everyone spent as much time in the gym as Obama, I guarantee that our nation’s health and healthcare system would be much better off. Congress could use, at least on this one issue, to follow the President’s lead.