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.
|
Indulge me: this has nothing to do with women’s fitness.
On the other hand, it could.
I just read an interesting article on msnbc.com, one in a series on how senior news editor Mike Stuckey is coping with prostate cancer. What I liked: once Mike received the diagnosis of prostate cancer, he changed his diet radically.
No, he’s not eating alfalfa sprouts and drinking rice milk (although those could be healthy choices). He’s eating many more vegetables and fruits and cutting way back on some of his former favorites: sausage, cheese, red meat, nacho chips, and so on.
Changing his diet wasn’t all that difficult, he says, once he realized that it could help save his life.
Most of us don’t have a cancer diagnosis at the moment, but one in three of us will have one at some point in our lives. Why not make the dietary changes now?
The ultimate payoff could be a longer, healthier life; the short-term payoff will be increased energy and probably a better-looking midriff and rear end.
Here’s the article:
Battling bad cells with good eating
Had enough of cancer, urine and assorted penis facts for now? Good, let’s talk about food! In his battle with prostate cancer, MSNBC.com’s Mike Stuckey finds that it’s not very hard to do the right thing when it comes to nutrition.
You’ve got to see this presentation on msn.com. It depicts a map of the United States and shows, from 1986 to the present, how the percentage of obese people changed, state by state, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control.
Folks, this is amazing and horrifying. At the end you can click on any state to see what efforts are being made there to combat obesity.
I keep thinking I’m obesity-obsessed, but the fact that “everybody’s fat” now (OK, slight exaggeration) is not my imagination. The numbers don’t lie.
In the interest of keeping myself accountable, here’s a brief progress report on the quest to get down to 125 by mid-September:
I’ve gone from 134 to 131.4 since I began this latest push about a month ago and lost three-quarters of an inch from my waist.
At this rate, I may not achieve my stated goal, but it’s good to be getting leaner. I’m not cutting as many calories as I could—am consuming between 1,850 and 1,950 on my reduction days and about 2,200 to 2,300 on maintenance days. The routine is three reduction days, followed by one maintenance day, repeated ad infinitum.
I’m getting to the gym about three days a week (I find I can’t sustain five days a week—probably has something to do with my age and recovery ability) for both weights and cardio, and we get a 30-minute walk with the dogs most mornings. My strength on the leg press and bench is improving, although it’ll take me a long while, I believe, to get back my former upper-body strength. (A dratted case of tennis elbow is hampering my back and bicep movements.)
I’ve started using my Accu-Measure bodyfat calipers again, although I never like the fat percentage the calipers give me. Even if I don’t consult the chart, I can see whether the skinfold measurement is getting smaller.
That’s important, as I’m working out fairly intensely in the gym and add muscle fairly quickly for a female—that is, former muscle “returns” fairly rapidly. So even if my scale weight stays the same because I’ve lost a few ounces of fat and gained a few ounces of muscle, the calipers will tell me whether I’ve made progress or not.
I’m a sucker for e-books and have just placed an order for Craig Ballantyne’s “Turbulence Training.” Why did I buy it? Well, the marketing material rang true by emphasizing the importance of short, intense workouts, for starters, rather than long steady-state cardio at low intensity. That’s not a new idea, but I’m always interested in reading new expressions of valid principles.
Also, Craig is apparently a CSCS (certified strength and conditioning specialist) with a master’s degree in exercise physiology. CSCS certification ain’t easy to get—you have to know your stuff.
I’ll let you know how it sounds when I’m able to download the pdf. There was an odd glitch in the system, so I had to e-mail for help.
Update: Wow—fast customer service. Just got an e-mail from CB with a link to download the book and bonuses. As I said, I’ll keep you posted.
Here’s an interesting piece from MSNBC.com, in which three-quarters of obese people surveyed by telephone said that they have healthy eating habits and perform “vigorous” exercise three times a week.
75 percent of obese people say they eat healthy
More than three-quarters of obese Americans say they have healthy eating habits, according to a survey of more than 11,000 people.
I think it’s likely that the vast majority of these people don’t have a clear concept of what healthy eating and vigorous exercise are. I’d guess that the majority of Americans don’t get it either.
Healthy food choice is part of the equation; appropriate portion size is too.
OK, most people know that fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are good things and that saturated fat is a bad thing. That may be the level of most folks’ dietary sophistication.
But when you throw in the effects of advertising, how’s the average person supposed to know that filling up on fat-free this and low-carb that is just as likely to make you fat as snacking on Krispy Kremes?
As for vigorous exercise, I suspect that when one is seriously overweight, even the mildest form of movement feels strenuous and unpleasant. When I was 30 pounds overweight and out of shape, just walking up the hills in the neighborhood got me out of breath. Was that walk vigorous exercise? Not really, but because I was out of shape, mild exercise was difficult.
In early July my training partner struck up a conversation with a beautiful, buff young woman who also trains at our gym. Turns out she is a fitness competitor who was just days away from competing in the 2006 Figure Nationals in New York City.
Well, we saw her again on Wednesday evening, and she told us she had won her class and earned her pro card.
Congratulations, Nina DeTommaso! You look gorgeous!
Check out her context pix here.
A story posted in mid-July on MSNBC.com’s diet and health section begins as follows:
With excess weight a greater problem than ever, the question of whether
changing eating habits or exercise is more likely to produce weight
loss is vital.
No, that question isn’t vital. It misses the point entirely.
Here’s the point: Most of us aren’t as healthy as we could be because we make poor food choices, eat too much, and move too little. As a result, the majority of the population is overweight. These are indisputable–the kind of obvious conclusions the U.S. government presents in its 2005 Dietary Guidelines.
If those factors are endangering our health, the solution is striving for greater health by making better food choices, eating the appropriate amount of food for our activity level, and engaging in regular physical exercise.
So why does this article’s author–a registered dietician–pose the irrelevant question "should we eat better or exercise in order to lose weight?"
The problem–overweight–has multiple causes, including too many calories and too little activity. The solution has to involve both food choices and physical exercise.
You can find the full article here.
Here’s a cool trend: more women (about 20 percent) now say they do strength training at least twice a week, and more people over age 65 are also pumping iron.
Check out the Associated Press story on msnbc.com:
Sculpted trend spurs women to the weight room
Women are pumping more iron, with nearly 1 in 5 doing twice-a-week workouts, a new federal study shows.
What a difference from when I first entered a weight room (1975 or 1976). Hardly any women.
This study is a nice antidote to the depressing flow of bad news about how the rate of obesity is rising.
This is on my mind because of a recent conversation between myself and a good friend and training partner.
I announced that I’d like to tighten up a bit by the time I reach 50 this September. My goal—a somewhat scary one—is to get back to 125 or thereabouts. It’s scary because 130 is such a comfy setpoint for me. Since I reached my fat-loss goal in April 2005, I’ve usually weighed between 130 and 132, with a low of 128 and a high of 134 (a few weeks ago, when I noticed that either all my pants had shrunk or my butt had expanded).
So my friend said, I’d like to lose 10 pounds by your birthday. My response was, that’s great—what changes will you make to your diet and activity level?
She replied that she was eating pretty clean already, and she figured our gym workouts and her morning walk (three times a week) would do it.
Keep in mind, she’s lifting once or sometimes twice a week. She also enjoys eating out (who doesn’t?). And probably all of you know how hard it is to eat moderately at restaurants.
My point was that if she’s maintaining her weight on the amount she’s eating and the amount she’s working out, why should she expect 10 pounds to drop off if nothing changes?
I’ve been where she is.
During my weight-loss journey, I stayed on a plateau for six months or more because I refused to count calories and just kept thinking, How come I’m not losing weight? I’m eating clean.
Yes, I was eating clean—eating just enough clean calories to maintain my weight. Duh!
When I finally made the commitment to keep a food journal and track my calories, the pounds came off. That’s what I’m doing now to get down to 125. I’m also walking most mornings, doing cardio at the gym about five days a week, and lifting three days a week.
I keep a food journal and also a separate log that tracks the date; whether I walked, lifted, and/or did cardio that day; my waist measurement and scale weight; and how many calories I consumed per day.
I don’t weigh or measure every day, but at the end of the week, the scale and tape measure tell me whether I’ve made progress or not—and the calorie and activity charts tell me what it took to make progress (or not).
Then I know whether my efforts are working or not, and I have a clue what I need to do in response.
Sally Squires’ “Lean Plate Club” columns (on The Washington Post website) are worth checking out, and if you enjoy them, you can subscribe to a weekly e-mail version.
This week’s column, “Losing in the Limelight,” focuses on the pros and cons of telling everyone your weight-loss goals.
Sally mentions a physician, Dr. Nick Yphantides, who used to weigh 467 pounds. Yikes! Nick lost a gob of weight and has maintained his loss for five years. Read about him here.
|
|
