Books for the buff 
Tom Venuto: Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle
Detailed info on healthy nutrition, goal-setting and motivation, the basics of weight-training,
and cardio for fat loss. If you could
have just one volume on getting lean, this is it.
Ian
King, Lou Schuler: Men's Health The Book of Muscle
Terrific guide to weight training for
both sexes. High-quality photos, innovative exercises as well as standard
fare, good background in laymen's language.
Lou Schuler: The New Rules of Lifting for Women: Lift Like a Man, Look Like a Goddess
Tells women what they need to know about lifting weights: their workouts should be heavy and intense, just like a guy’s.
Barbara
J. Rolls: The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan : Feel Full on Fewer Calories
The science of satiety. This book teaches real-world portion control and how
to make healthful, filling choices.
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Nice dense bones. You know you want ‘em.
Keep doing your weight-bearing exercise, get your dietary calcium (through low-fat dairy if you can tolerate it, otherwise through almonds, kale, broccoli, bok choy, soybeans, etc.) and your vitamin D, and get a bone-density test if you’re female and approaching or past menopause.
The National Osteoporosis Foundation has some good info on prevention and treatment of osteoporosis, and I just discovered that you can download pdf versions of its quarterly publication. There’s some good info there. On the same page, you can sign up for NOF’s bone-health updates via e-mail.
A reader wonders how long it should take to start seeing effects from body pump.
Good question, given the claims made on the body pump portion of the Les Mills website, to wit:
BODYPUMP®is proven to be "the world’s fastest way to get in shape" by
research which has confirmed higher than expected fat-burning effects
alongside endurance, strength and ‘wellness’ benefits.
Well, hmmmm. A quick look over the website does not reveal the findings or the source of this research. My opinion–worth every cent you’re paying for it–is that all exercise is beneficial, but no specific form deserves to be called "the world’s fastest way to get in shape" for every individual. Weight-training is certainly the fastest way to build muscle, but body pump’s high reps are going to enhance muscular endurance more than stimulate size.
(You say you don’t want size because you’re a woman and just want beautiful curves? Beautiful curves are made of muscle. No such thing as "toning." It’s all muscle building. Besides–unless you’re a genetic freak [a term I use with affection] or on gear, you ain’t gonna build any size you don’t want. Those of us who want more muscle have to work awfully hard for minor gains.)
So I guess it depends what you’re looking for–and what kind of shape you’re in when you start the class. I do body pump for the sake of variety and because staying in constant motion for an hour burns calories. In other words, I see it more as a fat burner than a muscle builder. My other days in the gym are for building size with free weights and machines; body-pump day is a fun and shorter workout than usual, and because it involves high reps, it stimulates my muscles in a different way.
Can’t find my copy of Fred Hatfield’s Power: A Scientific Approach, but Dr. Squat says that although the biggest size gains are stimulated by low reps and medium reps, certain portions of the muscle cell are turned on, so to speak, by very high reps.
I still haven’t answered the question, have I? Short answer is that the body begins to respond immediately to whatever stimulus it gets. If one is new to weight training (and manages to avoid injury and is taught good form), gains are rapid. The leaner one is, the easier it is to observe those gains. I’d say give it three months to start noticing significant visual changes. But I’ll bet you start feeling more energetic within a few weeks.
While catching up on the National Strength and Conditioning Association website, I came across an interesting study intended to answer an age-old question: are multiple sets better than single sets?
Here’s a blurb from the press release:
It has been documented that in untrained individuals, a single-set training program helps maintain strength gains. However, once trained, will a single-set help maintain the same strength?
No, according to a recent study published by the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) in its Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (November 2004). In fact, while using single-set training, the study finds that strength actually decreases in postmenopausal women. Researchers from the University of Erlangen, Germany found that in pre-trained subjects, multiple-set training continues to work at increasing strength, while single-set training not only does not maintain strength, but decreases it.
You could be excused for wondering whether this applies to those who are not postmenopausal women.
Also, I’d have to see the full article to know what kind of training these women were doing in their single sets. Working to failure or not? Using heavy or moderate weights?
So without seeing the journal (available online to members only), I’m not willing to venture an opinion. Like most of the rest of you, I’ll keep doing my multiple sets. On the other hand, if I have only 20 minutes to spare and have to choose between not working out and doing just one set of each movement, I’m going to opt for B.
No, this isn’t about one of those ludicrous diets that proclaims “Eat all you want of your favorite foods and still lose weight!”
U.S. News & World Report’s cover story for March 7 is about “Volumetrics”–the eating plan developed by Dr. Barbara Rolls of Penn State. In a nutshell, Rolls discovered that people tend to eat about the same weight of food every day, and that equal weights of food tend to produce equal satiety. In other words, eating a certain volume of, say, potato chips, produces about the same satiety as eating an equal volume of fruit, vegetables, whatever. But as you already know, the portion of chips has a whole lot more calories and many fewer nutrients than the fruit.
Foods can be categorized by their energy density–calories divided by weight. Water and fiber reduce density, so, for instance, 100 calories’ worth of raisins (a dry food) is much more dense than 100 calories’ worth of grapes. The portion of grapes is also much larger, hence producing greater satiety.
The concept is simple but explaining it is tough. Read the article.
I read Rolls’s original book, The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan, several months ago and thought it made a great deal of sense. I’ve tried to incorporate her principles, which merge nicely with my other dietary goal of eating more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.
The funny part is that the aforementioned book was published in 2000 to–as far as I can tell–little or no fanfare. It certainly never reached the levels of publicity enjoyed by Atkins or the Zone or the South Beach diet books. I suspect it wasn’t well publicized. When I borrowed the hardcover from the library, I almost didn’t open the book because (embarrassing confession here) the cover was so ugly. Obviously, not much effort was put into marketing the book.
Just recently Volumetrics has begin getting lots of publicity because Rolls’s second book, The Volumetrics Eating Plan: Techniques and Recipes for Feeling Full on Fewer Calories, was just published. I’ll buy it. And I highly recommend the first one.
Back pain bites (substitute your favorite verb).
Things that help:
Strengthening your core.
Getting strong, flexible hip extensors and cultivating a balance between the strength and flexibility of hip flexors (which are often worked when you exercise abs) and hip extensors.
Strengthening the small muscles of the back. (An entire book is devoted to this approach to reducing back pain.)
Here’s a Men’s Health article offering several useful moves (thanks, Kris, for turning me on to this).
But sometimes these approaches aren’t enough because the pain is caused by nerve impingement, damage to a spinal disk, osteoarthritis, or any number of other maladies.
Dutifully performing my exercises makes a difference–but the pain is still there, and some mornings it’s bad. I suspect I’ve got some arthritic changes as a result of a deadlifting injury many years ago. So I’ve made an appointment with the neurosurgeon who diagnosed my bulging disk in 1986. We’ll see what he says.
I should’ve seen this story (Reuters report, published on MSNBC.com) two weeks ago but didn’t:
Trans fat suit costs McDonald’s $8.5 million
McDonald’s has agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle a lawsuit over artery-clogging trans fats in its cooking oils, the company said on Friday.
Who benefits? The plaintiffs, of course; the American Heart Association, to which Micky D’s has promised to donate $7 million; and consumers of French fries etc., when McD’s further reduces the amount of transfat in its foods.
When you see "hydrogenated vegetable oil" on the label, that means transfat–which is worse for your arteries than saturated fat (e.g., butter [mmmmm good] and lard).
As always, if you stick to less-processed foods, you’re okay. Fruits, vegetables, lean meats, low-fat dairy, whole grains: no transfat, no problem.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest is clamoring for the fed to categorize sodium (salt) as an additive and thus to regulate it. Here’s a Reuters story published on MSNBC.com:
Government should regulate salt, says group
A consumer group sued the federal government, saying that salt is killing tens of thousands of Americans and that regulators have done too little to control salt in food.
I don’t know much about the science, as I’ve never worried about salt intake. It strikes me, however, that the simplest way to avoid ingesting too much sodium is to cook your own food, from fresh ingredients, and avoid all that packaged snack food and prepared stuff that isn’t good for you anyway. Apparently restaurant food is a key contributor to the high sodium content of the American diet. Just one more reason not to eat out.
Well, it’s not much different from what I did at 28.
Except.
I think (hope) I’m a little smarter now about the foundational stuff. Now that I know I am not immortal (a common misperception of the young), I warm up more carefully. I go to bed earlier. I eat more nutritiously. I stretch more faithfully. I go easy when something hurts and go to beat hell on days when the planets align and everything goes right and I feel strong as an amazon and my arms and chest are pumped up to there and my legs are so fatigued that I have to grab the handrail to walk down the stairs in the gym. Is there a better sensation in this world? I can think of a few . . . but just a few.
Being 48 isn’t bad, and it had better not be because I hope to be here next year and the year after and the year after and so on, God willing.
One side effect of training with weights and generally being in shape is that I have energy to burn. It’s still hard to get out of bed at 5 to walk the dogs, and I still yawn my head off at night. But in the intervening hours I’m the Energizer bunny. Last Monday night at a choral rehearsal one of the women in the alto section said to me, "I’m 24, and I don’t have half as much energy as you." And she was a healthy-looking young thing.
In other news, I managed six unassisted reps with 95 in the bench press on Tuesday.
I also reduced the amount of assistance I’m getting from the assisted pull-up and dip machine. Man, do I love that machine. In the old days the only way I could get pull-up assistance was to have my friend Jim McKairnes stand under me, grab my knees, and heave, heave, heave as needed to get me up to the bar. Can’t wait for the day when I can do unassisted pull-ups and dips again.
All in good time, my pretty. All in good time.
This from HealthDay News, published on MSN.com:
Clue to Controlling Appetite Found:
Discovery could one day lead to weight-loss pill in humans
But don’t hold your breath:
"The
tantalizing lure of a ’silver bullet’ to prevent weight gain and treat
obesity propagates irrepressible hope alike among the public at large
and scientific researchers alike," said Dr. David L. Katz, director of
the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine.
"To date, such hopes have consistently been dashed."
Katz added there are reasons to be cautious
about any drug for weight control. "Weight gain occurs because of more
calories in than out," he said. "The physiologic mechanisms that favor
weight gain are diverse, redundant and profound. To turn them off is
tantamount to shutting down much that is fundamental to human
metabolism. Intuition suggests such an endeavor is fraught with hazard."
Perhaps
a C75 derivative will one day be one of the weapons used to combat
obesity and its consequences, Katz said. But there’s "no need to hold
our breath and wait," he added.
"We already
own the solution to obesity: increase daily calorie output above daily
calorie intake. There will likely never be a medication as supportive
of overall good health as the combination of healthful,
portion-controlled eating, and regular physical activity," Katz
stressed.
I love this guy.
Here’s a completely irrelevant post. Last night Steve and I attended a fundraising banquet to support research to cure cystic fibrosis. To make a long story short, the brother of Steve’s boss is very involved in the fight against CF, as two of his three children have the disease.
To learn more about CF, visit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
The meal was quite good (and I took advantage of it, having planned things so that yesterday could be a maintenance day), but upon reflection, here’s what I remember most about last night:
Most of the people there were of normal weight!
This is not the norm, folks. But it was great.
I don’t know what the explanation is–and after all, this took place in Tennessee, by all reports one of the fatter states in the Union. But perhaps most of the people there are living with CF patients–and perhaps that makes them try extra hard to provide healthy food for their families. Wild guess, but I’m not sure what could explain it.
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