Garma On Health » Exercise

Want Longevity? 5 Alternatives to a Calorie Restricted Diet

Joe Garma — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:40:41 +0000

Baby boomers want to cling to any remnant of youth possible, and calorie restricted diets are a proven way to extend longevity, but very few are willing to do it. (You’d hafta tape my mouth shut and tie my hands.) Until the age-defying pill is invented, here are five suggestions to live a longer and stronger life.

Alternatives to a caloric restricted diet for longevity

IF YOU’RE a Rhesus Monkey you have a chance to live substantially longer than your peers; that is if some scientist has caged you and is feeding you a calorie-restricted diet.

Caloric restriction – where you eat just enough of highly nutritious foods to maintain health, but not one calorie extra – has been a focal point of anti-aging research for decades, long enough to have proven its effectiveness with a creature remarkably similar to we humans, the Rhesus Monkey.

But it’s not all about monkeys. At this point, many studies done over a period of 70 years, and with a diverse range of species, have proven that “caloric restriction remains the most effective natural intervention for increasing longevity”, says Jay Williams, Ph.D., an acclaimed physiologist, medical nutritionist, author and researcher.

Studies on Rhesus Monkeys proves calorie restrictive diets improve longevity

So, given the all time high demand for a plethora of anti-aging products, procedures and gizmos, what percent of the population do you think are on a caloric-restricted diet?

Nearly zero percent.

A quick glance around any shopping mall is not a scientific method, but it will sure enough confirm my zero percent assertion.

Despite that the baby boomer generation is clinging to their quickly vanishing youth, and are willing to spend money on anything suggesting to be an age modifier, virtually no one is substantially reducing their caloric intake for the purpose of prolonging their health and life span.

That’s because it would take a Herculean effort, and is decidedly no fun. We’re talking a 20 to 40 percent reduction in calories.

Yes, besides longevity, there are benefits to the caloric reduction eating system, such as substantial reductions in diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, brain atrophy – and even wrinkles.

However, this is a two-sided coin. There are issues with such a diet, such as the potential for musculoskeletal losses, insufficient calories and amino acids (protein) for exercise, adverse effects for pregnant women, and more, which you can examine at Wikipedia’s exposition on the topic.

An Alternative to Caloric Restriction

In my view, and in my life, the caloric-restriction diet does not give sufficient benefits to outweigh the risks, plus the desire to maximize the joie de vivre of my life. Although Epicurus might judge my habits to be too merry-less, I concur with Dr. Williams’ suggestions for some eating behaviors that are safer, more enjoyable and sure to help with longevity and health.

Here are Dr. Williams’ four suggestions for a long and strong life — sprinkled, of course, with my expositions – with the addition of one of mine, number 5:

1. Don’t Overeat. The most important factor in your daily eating habits is to ensure you never eat to, or past, the point of fullness. The long-lived Japanese on Okinawa have a term for this: Hara hachi bu! – eat until 80 percent full. Although you may not feel full at the 80 percent mark, about twenty minutes after you put the fork down, you may be. It takes about this amount of time for the stomach to signal the hypothalamus in the brain that no more food is required.

2. Eat Nutritionally Dense Food. Focus on eating smaller meals with a lower caloric density and high nutrient density. Think plant-based diet, rich in vegetables and whole grains. Read my Diet 101 and 86 Year-olds Recipe for Longevity.

Eat fresh, nutrient dense foods

3. Know The Ingredients. Avoid eating meals with too many unknown ingredients. Often restaurants add excess oils and ingredients that make a seemingly healthy meal much higher in calories than you’d expect.

4. Exercise Aerobically. Aerobic exercise (the type that builds endurance) is an effective way to improve the production of certain sirtuins. Although you don’t need to be so aerobically devoted to benefit by sirtuin production, a 2010 study on marathon runners displayed a significant increase in sirtuin production post marathon.

And now to my added suggestion, number 5:

5. Exercise Anaerobically. Anaerobic exercise (the type that builds muscle) is now known to help cells maintain their DNA during successive cell division and to amp the production of a protein that slows the aging process. For more on this, read: How Exercise Slows the Aging Process and New Research – Muscles = Longevity.

So, What are Sirtuins?

Sirtuins are proteins that are involved with the regulation of both metabolism and stress homeostasis, and are linked to longer life spans in a range of species from yeast to mice.

Seven forms of sirtuins have been located in humans and have been identified in playing key roles in energy homeostasis in metabolic tissues that are important for longevity.

How do you make more sirtuins? You can either reduce your calories by 20 to 40 percent, or as Dr. Williams puts it:

“Maintaining a healthy energy balance of calories in and out through conscious eating and exercise not only aid in sirtuin mechanisms and metabolism maintenance, but also prevent the deterioration of physiological fitness during the process of aging including oxidative damage, inflammation and lack of protein turnover. These factors are what contribute to our disease susceptibility and our overall aging as well.”

The Bottom Line

What you eat, how much you eat, along with persistent physical activity are the most effective way to age gracefully and live longer.

Someday there may be a pill for longevity, but if you want to live to see that day, better eat better, eat less and exercise more.

Yep.

P.S. Read more specifics about Dr. Williams views on this topic in her post: Restricting Calories to Live Longer: Does it Work?.

A Mega-Pastor and Three Famous Doctors Hatch “The Daniel Plan”

Joe Garma — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:50:44 +0000

Three famous doctors and one mega-Pastor have hatched a health plan. It’s called “The Daniel Plan” and thousands at the Saddleback Church are losing weight and just plain getting healthier. Here’s what’s happening at The Daniel Plan.

WHAT DO you get when you create a health team with a plan devoted to educating and encouraging people to improve their health, and the players are Dr. Oz, Dr. Hyman, Dr. Amen and Pastor Rick Warren, among others?

Answer: The Daniel Plan.

Well, unless you’re a member Pastor Rick’s Saddleback Church, that answer begs the question:

“What’s the Daniel Plan?”

Answer: A health strategy with the medical input of heart surgeon Doctor Oz, functional medicine specialist Dr. Hyman and brain health expert Dr. Amen… and the spiritual guidance and community backing of Rick Warren, Pastor of one of the largest churches in the Nation, the Saddleback Church.

You may have heard about Rick Warren from his national best seller, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?. Rick Warren has, and continues to sell, so many copies of this book that he not only does not take a salary from the church, but also donates most of his earnings to charity.

So, I would venture to suggest, that the man’s heart is in the right place, even if I can’t bend my mind to his religiosity.

(No, I don’t really think it’s “God’s Prescription for Your Health” as one particular byline states, nor do I think anything humans can do would “glorify God” as the byline on the web site suggests. But, right down here on earth, The Daniel Plan sure could be your prescription to improve your health!)

Why The Daniel Plan?

The reason I’m writing about the Daniel Plan is because several thousand adherents to the plan are losing weight and getting healthier.

It’s obvious that the plan’s methodology is working, and that should be no surprise given the input of those aforementioned doctors, as well as the ability of Pastor Rick to exhort his flock to follow the righteous health path.

And it’s that last point, I think, that’s the real key to success – having a “flock” and a “path”. The flock is a group of like-minded, connected individuals who support each other along a proven path that leads to health.

This approach has a statistically higher chance of success than trying any behavior modification program by yourself and of your own construction.

The Daniel Plan embraces “The Simple Six” Core Principles:

CONNECT for Success – Get in touch with your health and with others!
RELY on God’s Power – Willpower is not enough. You need God’s power.
EAT Delicious Whole Foods – Imagine the Garden of Eden as your food source.
MOVE Your Way to Health – Get going. The more exercise, the more energy!
THINK Sharper and Smarter – Better brain health = better life!
HEAL for Life – Make a game plan for permanent changes that heal.

Given that this plan speaks to church-going folks and is animated by a church pastor, the agnostics and atheists among you might allow the Plan its principle #2. Certainly, it can’t hurt to believe that a power greater than yours is guiding you past the fridge at midnight.

Check out the success stories, and this video full of testimonials which looks like this —->

(Suggest you allow the stream to load before playing the video otherwise it may be choppy.)

And here’s a success story about Chef Jenny Ross.

UPDATE: Dr. Hyman in the HuffPost today (1/31/12) reports the following Daniel Plan results:

“Not only were there estimated weight reductions of 250,000 pounds but also equal reductions in medication use, hospitalizations and doctors visits. And it was free.

In a survey after 10 months of the program, participants reported the following:

An average weight loss of 13.5 pounds (and 18 pounds for those who said they followed the program closely)
72 percent of those who wanted to lose weight did
53 percent reported increased energy levels
34 percent reported better sleep
27 percent improvement in blood work
20 percent reported improvement in blood pressure
11 percent reported reduction in medications
31 percent reported improvement in mood

Those who did the plan together lost twice as much weight as those who did it alone.”

There’s a rich amount of information at The Daniel Plan site. The program is comprised of Eat, Move, Think, Heal and Connect, each with all the component parts necessary to get healthy.

For example:

Eat delves into nutrition, recipes, budgets and Superfoods.

Move gets into motivation and fitness programs for an individual and family.

Think presents the information helpful to understand behavior modification and brain health.

Heal speaks to mental health, hormones, energy, weight, skin, etc.

Connect ties in success stories, God and community.

The search function also brings up lots of information for a particular query. For instance, I searched at the site for “weight loss” and got these results:

The Daniel Plan Conquer Your Cravings
Studies show that people who maintain weight loss eat a healthy breakfast. Add
a dash of cinnamon. This fragrant spice has been found to help regulate blood …

The Daniel Plan Eating Out Rules
I’m going to order a salad to lose weight and be healthy. Because I’m … Often we fool ourselves into thinking that, “if I eat a salad, I’ll lose weight and be healthy.

The Daniel Plan – Food Groups
Calories, Hyman · Calories Count, Amen · Get Dunked · Why Most Diets Don’t Work ·

The Daniel Plan Shopping List
National Weight Control Registry · Why Most Diets Don’t Work

The Daniel Plan Vitamin Supplements
Sleep more soundly, lose weight and improve your overall health and vitality.

The Daniel Plan Recommended Foods
Calories Count, Amen · Get Dunked · National Weight Control Registry · Why Most Diets Don’t Work

The Daniel Plan – Get Your Kids Involved Early
7 Tips to Lose Weight · Calories, Hyman · Calories Count, Amen · Get Dunked · National Weight Control Registry · Why Most Diets Don’t Work

The Daniel Plan Main Dishes
Two bricks, individually wrapped in aluminum foil, make the best heavy weight for pressing …

If you’ve gotten this far without clicking over to The Daniel Plan, might as well fulfill your curiosity now. Here’s the link.

The Reboot Cleanse Diet – Two Common Struggles

Joe Garma — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 19:21:57 +0000

The Reboot Juice Cleanse, or Reboot Diet, is a popular and effective diet and/or cleanse; however, if you don’t approach it right, you will abandon it quickly as you struggle with hunger and detox headaches. Here, I answer two common questions from Reboot beginners who struggle to get the Reboot right.

YOU MIGHT have heard by now of the “Reboot Diet”, or the “Reboot Juice Cleanse” made very popular by Australian Joe Cross’ documentary, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.

A fast recap of the film: Joe Cross is fat, sick and although not “nearly dead”, he’s on that path. (Yes, I know we all are, but his was shorter than many.) The good entrepreneur that he is, Joe decided to make a documentary of his approach to losing weight and getting fit. For 60 days, he ambled across the USA while consuming nothing but vegetable-fruit juices made by his trusty Breville juicer (the same one I use). We witness Joe getting thinner and more vital, as does a couple of inspiring people who join him on his juicing quest.

So, now web sites have sprouted on the Interwebs to promote and support the Reboot Juice Cleanse. I myself have written about it, seeking to add my two cents about how to best go about successfully implementing this Reboot Diet.

In Fat Sick and Nearly Dead – The Reboot Plan, I introduce the documentary and suggest some improvements about how to do the Reboot Juice Cleanse.

In The Reboot Diet and the Detox Effect, I caution that diving from a meat and potatoes dietary existence into an all-juice, all-the-time diet/cleanse is a recipe for headaches, discomfort, hunger and an overall f_ _k you attitude manifested by throwing the Breville juicer out the window.

With all that as background, the reason I write this particular post is to share two comments I made to questions asked at the Join the Reboot site. I’ll present the questions asked by two earnest, beginner juicers, and my response to each.

Two Questions, Two Answers

Jon asks:

“I am new here and took the assessment which recommended that I should use the 15 Day Reboot program. I was actually interested in shooting for the 60 day juice fast as was demonstrated in the movie ”Fat Sick and Nearly Dead”. Is there anyone currently working towards a 60 day plan here? Should I give it a shot or should I stay with what was recommended?”

My Reply:

“Jon, I’ve been cleansing and juicing off and on for 30 years, and have helped friends do the same. Given that experience, let me suggest that you first learn to add the juicing to whatever diet you now have. Over time, begin substituting fresh foods for the stuff that inhabits cabinets. Then, drop a meal, add juice. Spend a week with that. Then drop two meals, add juice. Once you’ve gotten to this point, you may be ready to sustain a long juice-only cleanse.

This process will help ensure success and also minimize the detox effect, which could upend the whole juice cleanse. Don’t know if this site will allow it, but I’ll try to copy a link to “The Reboot Diet and the Detox Effect” for more about this: http://wp.me/pA04z-MQ

If it doesn’t show up just google, “The Reboot Diet and the Detox Effect”.”

Doris asks:

“Hi I want to workout where will I get my protein”?

My Reply:

“Doris, getting protein during a cleanse is not easy… I mean enough to keep or build muscle while cleansing.

Most protein sources (meat, fish, eggs) is acidic and should be avoided during a cleanse. Unfortunately, even if you don’t do exercise that breaks down muscle tissue during a cleanse, most people lose lean muscle tissue. Of course, this is compounded if you do the sort of exercise that does tax the muscles.

As a long-time cleanser and exerciser, I’ve faced this issue many times. Sometimes I just say, “the heck with it”, and keep ingesting my whey protein in water. I still get good cleansing results. But perhaps a better solution would be to eat a vegetable-based protein, like pea protein, or hemp protein.

Whichever you do, I suggest that if you’re going to exercise during your cleanse –assuming you’re just ingesting juice — do it with less intensity. After all, an important part of cleansing is to let your body excise toxins, rest and recover.”

Now, I share these two questions because they are common questions for beginners seeking to do a juice cleanse, or substantially reduce the foods common to the American diet in favor of vegetable/fruit juices.

The Bottom Line

As with any journey, where you start on the Reboot Cleanse depends on where you are. The further away is your regular, every day diet from an all vegetable and fruit diet — the slower must be your transition into a veggie/fruit juice diet/cleanse. Given that a cleanse demands rest, you should choose to do it when you can be less active than normal, and that includes ratcheting down the exercise intensity.

During a cleanse, you’re likely to lose both fat and muscle, so you could supplement with vegetable-based protein like pea or hemp protein. I’ve used whey protein powder (see ), which frankly is not ideal because whey is a diary product and diary is acidic, whereas a cleanse is about getting your body more alkaline; however, I still benefited from my cleanses even while using whey. (This is the whey product I use.)

If you’ve had any experience with juicing, how ‘bout you tell us about it in the Comments section below.

Thanks for reading!

Yep.

P.S. Here’s the Breville Juicer that Joe Cross and I use. Click the image and learn more about it at Amazon.com, and there you can decide if it’s the juicer for you.

Sit A Lot? Six (Powerful) Reasons NOT To

Joe Garma — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:04:46 +0000

The data doesn’t lie. Sitting for hours each day does the body harm. Sitting can reduce your lifespan, nullify the benefits of exercise, increase cancer risk, and other unhappy things. Read why you have to get up and move. Often!

Six Powerful Reasons to Sit LESS

WHAT BETTER moment to write about the dangers of sitting on your duff than when I am doing just that, along with a dozen others languorously sitting in this sunny Sausalito café?

I’m not a full-time blogger, nor am I a full-time (so-called) knowledge-worker, who typically massages his knowledge for employers while sitting. And yet, my derrière can be often found spread out on a chair.

Former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, famously used a standing desk. Some people use a large stability ball. (Which I do too, here and there.)

Standing actually burns substantially more calories than sitting. The stability ball is better than a chair because muscles that support your core must subtly work to keep you balanced and properly seated (aligned) on the ball, which also burns more calories than simply sitting in a chair.

So, what are you waiting for? More data? Well, consider these six reasons that I grabbed and will here summarize from a Huffington Post article called, Sitting: 6 New Reasons It’s Bad For Your Health.

Six Reasons to Get Up and Move!

1. Sitting can diminish the benefits of exercise. Researchers from the University of Missouri published results suggesting that sitting throughout most of the day may put individuals at higher risk for diabetes, obesity and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease — even if you clear time for daily exercise.

2. Sitting can increase the risk of death. As HuffPost editor Amanda Chan reported, a study in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that women who sat six or more hours a day were nearly 40 percent more likely to die over a 13-year-stretch than those who sat less than three hours.

Men fared better… sitting for more than six hours was linked with an 18-percent higher risk of death.

3. That no-good TV. Every hour you sit in front of the TV, you can slash your life expectancy by nearly 22 minutes. Sound like nonsense? Well, here’s the study from the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Do those hours add up to, say, six per day? Well, couch potato, off your feat consistently for that long can cut your life expectancy by five years.

4. Sitting increases cancer risk. Is it ridiculous to suggest that sitting may be responsible for more than 170,000 cases of cancer yearly — with breast and colon cancers being the most influenced by rates of physical activity (and inactivity)?

Christine Friedenreich, an epidemiologist with Alberta Health Services told this to MSNBC: “For many of the most common cancers, it seems like something as simple as a brisk walk for 30 minutes a day can help reduce cancer risk.”

5. Sitting adds to butt fat. HuffPost UK reported this:

“In a bid to explain why sedentary behaviour causes weight-gain, scientists believe that the precursors to fat cells turn into flab (and end up producing more) when subjected to prolonged periods of sitting down, otherwise known as ‘mechanical stretching loads.’”

Translation and conclusion: Putting prolonged pressure on your bottom can produce up to 50% more fat on it.

6. Sitting is an independent risk factor for serious cardiovascular events. Men’s Health covered a study in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, in which researchers from Louisiana found that people who sit for the majority of the day are 54 percent more likely to die of a heart attack.

Now, you may feel fine sitting all day long. I feel fine. But I can tell you that facts matter to me, and I’m going to make sure that I consciously get off my duff every hour, walk around, stretch, do a few squats, before spreading the glutes back over the cushion.

Amen.

Physically Imbalanced? Start with Your Core.

Joe Garma — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:52:46 +0000

Who isn’t physically imbalanced? Such as the left arm, or leg, is weaker than the right; or one side is stronger than the other. Such imbalances can get worse with age. No better time to get balanced than now. Buddha would approve.

Get Physically Balanced; Start with your Core

I JUST answered a question posed by someone using Quora, a site that links answers to questions. I get emailed health oriented questions from Quora, and if I have the time and can add some value, I do.

I answered one today that I’d like to share here on GoH because I think it’s a commonly experienced situation. The questioned was:

“What is the best way to fix muscular imbalances/disproportionate muscles?”

What follows is my answer.

“This would be my approach to fix muscular imbalances.

Say I could press more weight overhead (military press) with my left arm than my right. I would do four things to balance things out:

1. I’d do various deltoids exercises with dumbbells so the stronger side didn’t contribute a disproportionate amount of work, as it might when lifting a barbell. You could try using less weight on the weaker side but doing more reps, and then more weight, fewer reps. Mix it up. You want to shock the weaker side to grow.

2. I would check opposing muscle groups and test their balance. Since, deltoids push, I’d look at pulling muscles, such as the lats and biceps. Make sure they’re even, left vs right, and not weak relative to pushing muscles. If they are weak, do #1.

3. I’d completely stretch the muscles after workouts. A master of this is the physical therapist/weightlifter at the mobilitywod.com site. Search for the stretch you wish to learn and learn from a master.

4. Finally, I’d work the core. Could be uneven on the left vs right sides, and therefore doesn’t give balanced support to each side when lifting. Strength emanates out from the core to the arms and legs. Core exercises abound all over the Internet, so look around. Here’s a place to learn about getting strong where it counts, the core.”

Yep

Six Tools To Make Your New Year Resolutions Come True

Joe Garma — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 22:19:41 +0000

Here comes 2012! Will you achieve your New Year Resolutions? How will you make those goals a reality? Begin with a conception, move to a process and then use these six practical tools to attain your goals.

SO, I’M sitting here on New Year’s Eve morning getting a wee bit nervous. By now, I figure, I should have thought out my New Year’s Resolutions and be contemplating the plan to make them happen, an interesting compulsion given my erratic track record.

Well, “why not write about something I haven’t yet done to put me in the right head space?”, I suggest to myself. Yeah, that’s right, tell people what and how to do what I haven’t even done myself… but, of course, intend to.

Lucky you. For herewith are my thoughts on the matter, with ample help from HuffPost and Linda Eisenstadt.

Lisa Eisenstadt of the The Daily Muse

My take on their approach, as amended by my own brain twist is to begin with a conception, move to a process and then suggest actual goals along the health side of things.

Why bother? Well, if you spend any time and effort at all at resolution making and goal-attaining, you might as well put yourself in a space to succeed. Because the stats are not on your side.

As many as 100 million Americans make New Year’s resolutions, CNN reports. Only 40 to 45 percent of those people stick to their resolutions six months later. And that doesn’t mean these goals were attained, as the next set of statistics presented below affirm.

The Conception

The concept is to take small bites that are easily chewable or digestible. Or an even better analogy is the snowball. Apply this to each goal (resolution), particularly if it has eluded you in the past.

Start small and roll down the hill.

Think of what happens to a small fist-size snowball that’s rolled down a hill. Yep, get’s pretty big and gains momentum. (It’s how billionaire Warren Buffet explains how his wealth grew).

If you bumped into a gigantic 10 foot diameter snowball and were challenged to make it, you might turn around and run away, or you might brace yourself and sign a wavering signature to the contract figuring you’d find a way to meet this goal.

Or, you could simply say,

“My goal is to make a fist size snowball and each day move it further down the hill.”

Let it be small, but challenging. The one great reason to begin this way is because the data is clear: Only 12 percent of resolution-makers succeed in attaining their goals.

The Process

The process whereby you determine and manage your resolutions comes to us via Lisa Eisenstadt of the The Daily Muse. In her post, New Year’s Resolutions, How to Actually Keep Them, Ms. Eisendtadt refers to author and psychologist Richard Wiseman’s research which finds that 52 percent of resolution-makers are basically self-deceptive; they were confident their goals would be met, yet only 12 percent succeeded.

Those transcendent 12 percent that shamed the rest of us succeeded due to employing a better process that helped ensure that they crossed the goal line.

They set up step-by-step goals and they shared their goals with friends and family, thus making their commitments public.

There are six practical tools that Eisendtadt’s presents, which, naturally, I mix up with my own suggestions. You may find them to be a good process to incorporate into your goal making and goal doing.

Six Practical Tools to Attain Your Goals

1. Get Specific

Rather than say, “I’ll be healthier”, get more specific, such as, “I will eat five servings of fruits and vegetables each day, starting with three servings in week one, four in week two, and five in week three”.

Your resolution needs to be a tangible, achievable outcome. When you focus on that goal, when you visualize it, it needs to make you feel good to you, and it needs to be a positive outcome to you and perhaps others as well.

A good aide for this is a mantra. Make a mantra addressing your goal and repeat it during your visualization and throughout the day.

2. Write it Down

Write down your goals! Right down the steps to achieve them. Date the projected day of attainment and each step along the way. Without a step-by-step plan, the goal can appear overwhelming and trigger frustration or negative thoughts that get in the way of your success. But by planning and accomplishing one small thing at a time, you’ll stay on track, focused, and positive.

3. Make Time

Be sure to set aside ample time for yourself to achieve your goals. If you want to exercise more, plot out time in your weekly schedule for runs and time at the gym.

4. Move Past Doubt

Monitor how you undermine your goals with your thoughts. Pay attention to self-sabotaging mind chatter, like: “I’m not good enough” or “I can’t do it.” Every thought you have is an intention. It’s normal to feel fear, doubt, or worry — but to make progress, it’s important to move past those negative feelings.

If you find negative thoughts surfacing, don’t criticize yourself, but stay in control. If your thoughts don’t support you or your goals, let them go — they’re not doing you any good. Replace them with your positive mantra, instead. Remember that self-doubt thoughts are often misleading and downright wrong, and should be ignored.

5. Get a Partner

Having a group, partner, friend, or professional to encourage you can be a great way to keep you going. Try finding a friend who has a similar resolution, and check in with each other every week to talk about your progress and challenges. Or, ask a family member or significant other to keep you accountable — just make sure they’re supportive and positive.

You can also seek professional help, whether that’s a personal trainer to help you meet your fitness goals or a counselor who can help you tackle larger, looming issues such as low self-confidence or a lack of direction. If you are dealing with issues of self-doubt, these can seriously get in the way of you meeting your other goals — so do yourself a favor, and address such issues head on.

6. Be Still

Have you heard the saying, “Be Still, Know God”? My interpretation of this is that only when you’re your body and mind are still can you let in impressions/thoughts not spawned by the altered ego. How can lofty thoughts penetrate the constant mind chatter unless you quiet them? Be still.

You’re more likely to slip on your goals when you’re stressed or overwhelmed, so spend time every day to getting out of your thoughts and reconnecting with yourself. Try a breathing exercise, meditation, yoga, or just going for a walk. The more practice you have being still and calm, the more present you’ll be for each step of achieving your goals.

[Read: Are Your Thoughts Yours?]

Setting and reaching goals isn’t about willpower, it’s about the power of your intention. Once you’ve mastered these few steps, you’ll be well equipped to follow through on your resolutions — this time, for good.

The Goals

OK, so here let’s consider applying some of the above tips to health goals. These are examples that may guide you in determining health-oriented goals of your own. I’m guided here by a HuffPost article entitled, New Year’s Resolutions: How to Make Your Healthy Goals Stick.

Get Fit

WebMD reports that about 15 percent of people who make resolutions for the New Year cite getting in shape as their top priority, WebMD reports. But by some estimates, as many as 60 percent of people let those new gym memberships deplete their bank accounts without anything to show for it, according to Time.com.

Improve Your Chances: “Fitness” is not a goal, as it’s not specific enough. Pick a specific goal like being able to do more pushups, jump rope longer, or walk up that tall hill outside your home faster. This way, you’re being specific and can track your progress. Another idea along the vein of the snowball is to write down a goal of going to the gym twice a week for the first month, thrice the second, etc.

[Have five minutes to spare? Watch Meg Hoffman’s five minute exercise routine.]

Lose Weight

It’s the perennial favorite. Year after year, losing weight is among the most popular New Year’s resolutions. And yet more Americans are overweight and obese than ever before. It takes cutting or burning off 3,500 calories to lose a pound a week (that’s 500 a day)!

Improve Your Chances: Again, as implied above in “Get Fit”, god is in the details. Writing down “lose weight” in your goal journal is useless. Need specifics. You need a weight goal (which always has a time-line) and a map (plan) to get there.

One idea is start a food journal to track what you eat and how much of it, making plans with an exercise buddy or personal trainer to keep you accountable to a fitness regimen, or even simply weighing yourself every day. (Note: There can be variance up and down, day to day, so make sure you focus on the weekly average.)

[Read 10 Unusual (Need to Know) Tips About Losing Weight for many weight loss tips, including food journaling.]

Eat Healthier

You know when you make an unhealthy food choice. But which unhealthy food choice do you habitually make? It might be serving size, fast food, sodium, or sugar, etc. (Read Sugar Lover? Which Type Are You.). Again, specificity matters in goal making and attaining.

Improve Your Chances: Make a list of what you’re willing to do to eat healthier. Then choose one or two items on that list and make a plan to incorporate them, or delete them from your pantry, sorta speak.

At first, it might be an easier transition to determine what foods or food groups you aren’t getting enough of and focus on adding these to your diet, and gradually delete the bad stuff later. Example: Eating more fruits and veggies, replacing refined grains with whole grains or choosing lean, fresh meat over fattier, processed meats.

[Would a blueprint be helpful? Here is mine: A Blueprint for Eating Right.]

And that’s it for now, except to underscore that achieving your goals is not mainly about willpower, but about intention and process.

You can think that someday you’d love to visit Croatia, but it’s unlikely to happen unless you truly intend to do so, you have a plan to get there, and each week you’ve taken one additional step to getting on that plane.

Happy New Year!

Like Tim Ferris, I Try to Overeat Without Gaining Weight

Joe Garma — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 20:36:35 +0000

AS PROMISED in This Holiday, Overeat and Gain No Weight, posted on December 23, 2011, this is my report of how I fared following Tim Ferris’ protocol for binging without gaining weight.

IF YOU want to understand what’s going on in this post, please first read This Holiday, Overeat and Gain No Weight.

The idea is to do certain things during a day of binge eating in order to get away with adding all those excess calories to your mid section. The basics involve:

- Beginning the day with protein

- Taking grapefruit juice before you binge meals

- Drinking coffee and Yerba Mate tea

- Ingesting certain supplements

- Performing certain exercises at the right time

(At this point, you really should read This Holiday, Overeat and Gain No Weight.)

I confess right at the start that I didn’t prepare properly. I wrote about the Tim Ferris protocol too close to my planned Binge Day, Christmas!

The plan for Christmas dinner was to go to my sister’s house. I knew there would be all kinds of nasty, tasty food there for me to over eat. The timing was good for the binging, but not good for acquiring the supplements recommended in Mr. Ferris’ protocol.

OK, with that said, let’s dive into what I did and what the results turned out to be. First, what I ate, when I ate it and what else I did and didn’t do.

But before we launch into that, a little interlude brought to you by the Sunny Cowgirls singing, I Ate Too Much For Christmas:

Now that you’re properly tuned for this post’s topic, on to “My Binge Data”…

My Binge Data

This is the food eaten, when eaten, estimate calories courtesy of Google (for instance, search for “10 walnut pieces” and, magically, get 150 calories), as well as exercise sessions.

9:00 AM:

8 oz water with 1 Tbps of apple cider vinegar, 0

9:15 AM:

Protein drink consisting of — 6 oz almond milk, 4 oz water, 3 oz aloe vera juice, 20 grams whey protein powder, 3 Tbps flax seed powder and 10 grams Ultimate Greens. Approximately 120 calories.

5 raw Brazil nuts, 150 calories.

10:00 AM:

8 oz coffee with 3 Tbps low fat milk, 10 calories.

10 walnuts, 150 calories.

1 tangerine, 45 calories.

10:45 AM:

16 oz green tea, 0 calories.

2 dried figs, 70 calories.

6 oz orange juice, 100 calories.

12:10:

2 minutes squats, push-ups, squats, wall presses.

12: 15 PM:

200 mg alpha-lipoic acid, 0 calories.

200 mg garlic extract, 0 calories.

1 small oatmeal muffin, 125 calories.

6 oz coffee + 2 Tbps eggnog, 30 calories.

3 oz smoked salmon, 220 calories.

1 Tbps cream cheese, 35 calories.

1 sprouted whole wheat bagel, 250 calories.

3 slices tomato, 10 calories.

3 slices onion, 5 calories.

2 Tbps blueberries, 20 calories.

2:00 PM:

3 oz eggnog, 115 calories.

1 shot brandy, 65 calories.

3:15:

8 oz water + 1 Tbps apple cider vinegar, 0.

3:20:

2 minutes squats, push-ups, squats, wall presses.

5:30:

3 oz orange juice + 5 oz water + 2 Tbps psyllium husk powder (shake and drink), 50 calories.

5:45 PM:

25 pasticcios, 85 calories.

4 crackers, 50 calories.

10 almonds, 70 calories.

4 green olives, 45 calories.

2 oz cheese, 230 calories.

6:40 PM:

2 minutes squats, push-ups, squats, wall presses.

6:45:

12 oz salad, light dressing, 75 calories.

6 oz turkey, 200 calories.

1 oz stuffing, 108 calories.

3 oz kale, 43 calories.

2 oz sweet potato, 55 calories.

2 oz mash potato, 60 calories.

6 oz white wine, 150 calories.

12 oz beer, 150 calories.

12 oz green tea, 0 calories.

5 oz strawberry rhubarb pie, 400 calories.

14 peanut M&M, 140 calories.

9:50 PM:

2 minutes squats, push-ups, squats, wall presses.

10:30 PM:

8 oz water + 1 Tbps apple cider vinegar, 0 calories.

I’ll now grab the calculator and add up the calories…and the total is…

3,431 calories for my binge-eating day!

Now, if you’ve dutifully read This Holiday, Overeat and Gain No Weight as I ~~instructed~~ sweetly requested, you may now be snickering,

“Ha! Ferris’s 6,214 calories blew the Garma-dude away!!”

Indeed he did, and I am humbled. I really did try to eat more, but what can I say except to say that matching Tim Ferris in anything is a long shot — a statement that will be underscored as we get into BMR relative to calories consumed calculations.

A Primer on “BMR”

Let’s dig deeper into the calories consumed relative to Tim’s and my respective basal metabolic rates (“BMR”) – the calories a body uses at rest to maintain a body’s caloric needs.

In Ferris’ book, The 4-Hour Body, where I read about this “Binge Protocol”, he reports that his BMR over a 24-hour period is 1,765 calories, or 883 for 12 hours. To that he adds his estimate for calories expended that 12-hour day by walking and a twenty minute weight lifting work out, and then divides that total calories expended number into what he consumed – 6,214 – resulting in a net caloric intake of 6.8 times his BMR!

My BMR estimate is 1990. As expected, it’s a larger number than Tim’s given that I weigh considerably more and therefore need more calories just to be a couch potato. (Get a crude estimate of your BMR as this calculation does not consider lean body mass – how much muscle vs fat you have on your body.)

On Binge Day, I walked two miles and did those two-minute exercises mentioned above, adding to an estimated calorie burn of 150 calories. Add that to my BMR and you get a total of 2,140 calories expended on Binge Day.

3,431 in and 2,140 out, results in a net caloric intake of 1.6 times. Notice that 6.8 is a much bigger number than 1.6. I’m not even close to what Ferris achieved in terms of how many calories he consumed relative to his BMR.

Surely, I should be able to match his feat of overeating without gaining weight.

Pay the Piper? The Scale Speaketh

One hour ago, I stepped on the scale wearing the same clothes I did two days ago on the morning of December 25th, Binge Day. Here are the results…

December 25^th weight: 216.4 pounds.

December 27^th weight: 218 pounds.

Yep, despite eating far fewer calories than Tim Ferris, I gained weight (1.6 lbs) and he lost weight (4 lbs).

I wasn’t able to test body fat as he did; those of you who read about his protocol will recall that his body fat percentage was actually a tiny bit lower two days after his Binge Day.

Spinning the Results

If you expect to duplicate the results of a scientific experiment, it must be precisely followed. As I’ve noted, I fudged. I did not have the specific supplements that Tim Ferris used and recommends for this protocol to work.

My hope was that some substitute actions would assist me in getting results similar to Tim’s. Here were my all-too-weak substitutes:

-Rather than the grapefruit juice, I ingested apple cider vinegar as it mitigates blood sugar spikes. I also tried orange juice to see if this citrus would work as well as that in the grapefruit juice.

-Of the four supplements, I had only, and therefore used only, two — obviously insufficient.

-Not having Yerba Mate tea, I drank green tea. I also used the time-tested psyllium husk drink to pave the way to the exit door, thus underscoring Tim’s “Principle #2: Get the Food Out Quickly”, which did work, but could not overwhelm the other deficits in my reenactment of his protocol.

One other factor to consider is that on Binge Day, Tim did a 20-minute, moderate intensity weight lifting session. I did not. This could have helped measurably in boosting his metabolic rate over the next 24-hour period, and might have reduced the weight gain I experienced had I done the same.

Moreover, even though the next day, December 26th, was a scheduled exercise day for me, I did not do it as I had no information as to whether Tim exercised the day after Binge Day. If he did not exercise and I did, I would be adding yet another curve ball in my attempt to maintain his protocol.

Lessons Learned

Despite not being able to overeat without gaining weight, can I justifiably feel that my interventionist actions reduced the pounds I would have gained if I had done nothing on Binge Day but binge?

Maybe.

This is near impossible to accurately know, or measure, because it’s very difficult to duplicate everything exactly, including what my body was doing on Binge Day and the intervening two days until weigh in.

Which underscores the soft spot in protocols like this one.

Given the difficulty for any of us not in the lab to reproduce an experiment, and given the uniqueness of our bodies and body biochemistry, one size does not fit all. What works for Tim or Joe (me) might not work for you.

That said, the science behind Ferris’ method seems solid, and I, for one, will endeavor to follow it more closely the next time I prepare for a Binge Day.

As ever, your comments are appreciated and may be presented in the Comments section below.

This Holiday, Overeat and Gain No Weight!

Joe Garma — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:59:20 +0000

Tim Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Body, tells us how to binge without gaining weight. The secret is in the supplements, starting the day right, and a wee little bit of well-placed exercise. The end result: this Holiday, overeat and gain no weight!

WITH THE Holiday Season and New Year upon us, we will be overeating as if succumbing to an eating disorder. Most advice on the matter is about eating abundantly of the good stuff while picking at the bad stuff. This is a noble sentiment. But during the Holidays, advice on how to prevent binge eating falls on deaf ears.

I say go for it. Binge away! Overeat to your heart’s content. After all, it’s our Holiday Birthright.

Just do two things so you don’t pay the inevitable price of constipation, bloat and weight gain:

Choose one, or two at most, days to do your binge eating; and
Adopt the advice of Tim Ferris to prevent fat gain whilst you binge.

Number one is up to you. Choose the day(s) when you’re going to the biggest food feast banquet of the Holiday season.

Number two is explained by Tim Ferris in his most recent book, The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman.

The rest of this post will explain the man’s methods for eating a bunch of high-calorie crap without gaining weight. (Hopefully.)

The relevant chapter in Mr. Ferris’ The 4-Hour Body is titled: “DAMAGE CONTROL, Preventing Fat Gain When You Binge”. There, Ferris tells the tale of his self-experimentation during a binge day, and his interventionist principles used to negate the binge calories’ propensity to create more fat on the ole body.

Tim Ferris on Binge Day

Tim meticulously recorded the food and drink eaten on binge day. The calories total a mind-boggling 6,214! This was eaten by a thirty-something year old man who weighed less than 170 pounds at the time, and had then a basal metabolic rate– the calories burned without activity – of 882 calories over the 12 hour time period of total eating. (Calculate your BMR.)

My calculator tells me that on his binge day, Ferris ate 7 times the calories needed to sustain his BMR. But, naturally, he didn’t stay in bed on binge day, so Tim estimated the calories he used from a very light calorie-expending day to be a mere 200, resulting in a net intake of 6.8 times his BMR!

Despite this amazing amount of overeating, remarkably, Tim was four pounds less and about the same percent body fat on the morning of the binge day as compared to 48 hours later. Specifically, on binge day he weighed 169 pounds at 9.9% body fat, and two days later weighed 165 pounds at 9.6% body fat. Remarkable!

At this point, the reasonable query is: “How did he do it”!

The Three Principles of the Lost Art of Binging

These three principles, says Ferris, are designed “to have as much of the crap ingested either go into the muscle tissue or out of the body unabsorbed”.

Principle #1: Minimize the Release of Insulin

If you’re familiar with Dr. Mark Hyman’s work and lectures, he is very focused on insulin levels produced by the body. He links belly fat, high cholesterol, depression, fatigue, infertility diabetes and many chronic diseases – which he likes to roll-up into one term, “Diabesity” — to the overproduction of insulin.

[My post on Diabesity is called The Diabesity Epidemic – It May Be Coming to You. I intend to post about Hyman’s PBS Diabesity lecture soon.]

The amount of insulin produced by the pancreas is diminished by smoothing out blood sugar spikes as a result of eating foods with high sugar content, such as white, refined, non-complex (“simple”) carbs (carbohydrates (bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, etc.).

When the pancreas produces more insulin than the body can use, it becomes insulin-resistant, thus needing an excessive amount of insulin to do the same job of keeping blood sugar levels even. The high insulin level leads to an appetite that is out of control and the resulting weight gain gets concentrated in the most damaging part of the body — around the belly. Belly fat!

Tim Ferris extols four actions to minimize the release of insulin:

1. On binge day, don’t make your first meal a binge meal. That can wait till after your breakfast. For breakfast, eat protein and fiber. Aim for 30 grams of protein within a half hour of arising, and either mix fiber-rich food into that protein meal, or supplement with fiber supplements.

The protein can be eggs, meat or protein powder. The fiber can be legumes (lentil, pea, beans, chickpea, etc.) or something like flax seed powder or psyllium husk powder.

2. Before your second meal of binge day – the start of your first “crap meal” (Tim, you have a way with words), ingest a small amount of grapefruit juice, which has a “near-flat-lining effect on blood glucose” (blood sugar).

3. Ingest supplements that increase insulin sensitivity. Tim recommends “PAGG”, which consists of the following four supplements, along with the amounts of each he uses per serving:

Policosanol, 20 – 25 mg

Alpha-lipoic acid, 100 – 300 mg

Green tea flavanols, 325 mg

Garlic extract, 200 mg

You can get all of these separately at Lucky Vitamins, and a Google search found an all-in-one supplement called PAAG Supplements 2.0. Lucky has good prices on all the top brands, but has slow mo shipping. Don’t know anything about PAAG S. 2.0.

If you’re an Amazon shopper, there’s a page for all the PAAG-comprised supplements.

Note: Mr. Ferris took two doses on pig-out day, but says he would have taken up to three doses “If I’m going whole hog…”, which makes me wonder if he thinks 6,214 calories is half hog.

4. Consume citric juices. These can be lime and/or lemon juice either in water or on food.

Principle #2: Get the Food Out Quickly

Proper eating is eating to maximize nutrition. Nutrition is medicine, as Dr. Hyman and Dr. Weil like to say. But on gluttony day, you want to absorb as little of the crap as you can.

This can be accomplished, Tim reports, by consuming caffeine and yerba mate tea. Yerba mate tea is widely available and it contributes to this endeavor by offering theobromine (also in dark chocolate) and theophylline (in green tea).

He takes 100 – 200 milligrams of caffeine, or 16 ounces of yerba mate tea during crap eating.

Apparently, this concoction instigates focused toilet seeking. I should add, you could similarly inspire this action by drinking down some psyllium husk powder (tablespoon) along with four ounces of apple juice and four ounces of water about one-half hour prior to crapmeal. Simply shake in a jar and down the gullet before it all congeals into Elmer’s glue.

Principle #3: Perform Brief, Multi-muscle Contraction Throughout the Binge

Working your large muscles, even briefly, “brings glucose transporter type 4 (“GLUT-4”) to the surface of muscle cells, opening more gates for the calories to flow into”.

OK, that description might make a scientist cringe, but what you should take away from this is that there’s someplace for the glucose (sugar from all the simple crabs you’re binging on) to go, like to fuel contracting muscles, rather than building the midsection’s muffin top.

Here’s what to do: 60 to 90 seconds of squats (no weight but you), push-ups (on your knees if regular ones are too hard) and wall presses (feet three feet or so away from the wall, face it, hands on it, press chest to and from it).

Do the exercises a few minutes prior to and 90 minutes after the binging. If you binge both at lunch and dinner, do this twice.

I’m Going To Do It!

Typically, I don’t binge on crap. Instead, I may pick at the mashed potatoes, gravy and stuffing, and stuff myself with bird, veggies and salad. (But here’s one time I surrendered to gluttony.) This Christmas Dinner at my sister’s home, however, I’m going to go where the whims of the Binge God direct me. I’ll do my own weigh in before and two days after, just like Tim Ferris. And I’ll report back to you.

[Update: As promised, here's my attempt to "Overeat and Gain No Weight".]

In closing, I encourage to you try one or more of Tim’s “Principles” on binge day. And if any of this intrigued you, know that you’ll find a bunch more “health hacking” in his book, The 4-Hour Body. I encourage you to check it out!

Beautiful “Exercise” Climbing Pinnacle Peak at Mt Rainer — Watch!

Joe Garma — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 01:02:10 +0000

Wherever you are, find a place to get exhilarated. Away from my usual exercise stuff and routine mode, I grab a buddy and hike up Pinnacle Peak, Mt. Rainier. Watch this invigorating and panoramic climb starting from Reflection Lake in Mt. Rainier National Park, WA. Lemon water and a energy-packed smoothie power us up.

FINALLY, I’VE uploaded video taken of a late fall hike from Reflection Lake at Mt. Rainier, WA to Pinnacle Peak. If you’re a hiker/climber, or simply love the outdoors, you’ll surely enjoy watching me and my pal, Anatole, stroll up some pretty steep terrain.

Hikes like these are great ways to mix up your exercise, and bring diversification to what might otherwise become an overdone and stale in-house or gym routine. I was sequestered at my family’s rural property in WA and thereby wasn’t connected to my usual workout places and toys, so with Mt. Rainier beckoning, I made it an exercise, and soul-lifting event.

And as I often preach in these pages, this “exercise session” came to fruition via the “buddy system”. Nothing so helps you break the cemented bond of inertia and overlay a new habit than does recruiting a buddy. The trip to Mt. Rainier and the climb up Pinnacle Peak was made so much more enjoyable due to the presence of my friend, Anatole.

[There are other things one can do for exercise if away from the usual exercise apparatus, as this video I made of an earlier trip to the homestead shows. Watch The Homestead Workout.]

And now, at long last, the video of our hike up Pinnacle Peak:

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Beautiful “Exercise” Climbing Pinnacle Peak at Mt Rainer — Watch!