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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Today Reuters published a story about the consequences of obesity in teens. The upshot is, the heavier one is at 18, the more likely one is to die in middle age.
Here’s the blurb:
Overweight at 18, maybe dead in middle age?
Young women who are overweight at the age of 18 have a higher risk of dying young, but medication and behavior therapy can help young people lose weight, U.S. researchers reported Monday.
I’d love to see the so-called fat activists—the people who maintain that being overweight poses no health risks—explain this one.
I can’t read a magazine these days without seeing an article or a blurb about antioxidants—for heart health, for cancer prevention, for healthier skin. It’s all good motivation for me to continue improving my diet.
About a year and a half ago I went on a big crusade to eat more fruits and vegetables (primary sources of antioxidants), and although my intake has been higher than it had been before, I’ve got a long way to go.
Have been reading Dr. David Katz’s books (The Way to Eat; The Flavor-Point Diet) and finding them interesting. He talks a lot about fruits and vegetables, and again, I’m on a crusade—not following a new “diet” but seeking greater health.
Because I’m always in a rush and rarely take time to cook, the trick for me is to go raw and focus on food I can wash, pack, and eat in a trice. So berries, apples, sweet peppers, tomatoes, and baby carrots are good options. I always have healthy snacks with me (I get overly hungry most days if I don’t eat every two to three hours), so it’s just a matter of carrying fruit/veg snacks in addition to my usual South Beach cereal bars, yogurt, whole-wheat pita, and light mozarella sticks.
The best news of all: coffee is one of the best sources of antioxidants in the American diet. I’ve got that one covered.
Guys, 50 is staring me in the face. In about two months, I enter a new decade. The thought is fairly mind-blowing, although I’ve been coming to terms with it ever since, um, turning 49.
I’ve got goals to meet.
I’ve been a little sloppy in the past couple of months, so the new gym membership (and attendant kick in the motivational pants) couldn’t have come at a better time.
I think I’ve written about this before: the fact that the body is so responsive to whatever we do or fail to do. So I’m not worried. I know what I need to do.
Here’s the dumb part. I was actually wondering whether my favorite jeans had shrunk (and my favorite shorts) because they were, well, tighter.
Hello! The pants haven’t shrunk; my butt has simply expanded!
I know the cure. The Rush has a whole raft of elliptical trainers and a very, very smooth leg-press machine that I’m just loving.
And tomorrow is leg day . . .
I joined Courtsouth, a local fitness chain, in 1985 or 1986, having been persuaded that I might make better gains if exposed to better equipment. Since 1983 I had been training in a pit—an old YMCA gym with ancient equipment but a dedicated cadre of (male) lifters. When it rained, puddles formed in the corner by the squat rack. The Y was primitive as all hell, but I learned a lot from the guys who trained there, after about six months had passed and they realized that 1) I seemed serious about lifting and 2) I wasn’t going away.
Two of my gym friends from the Y joined Courtsouth, which had frills such as stationary bikes, treadmills, and Nautilus machines, as well as a good supply of benches, bars, and dumbbells. So I got a “lifetime” membership to Courtsouth by paying a chunk of cash upfront, with the proviso that I would then pay $9 a year to maintain the membership.
Sometime during the 1980s the Tennessee legislature outlawed lifetime memberships because so many health clubs sold them, then went belly up. Courtsouth was sold two or three times in the ensuing years, but each time the new owners graciously honored the lifetime contracts.
It was good business to honor those contracts, and I rewarded Courtsouth with six or seven new members over the years—friends and colleagues to whom I recommended the club.
A few weeks ago I received a letter informing me that it was time to renew my membership. I went in for a workout, then stopped at the desk to renew, assuming I’d write a $54 check to renew my and my husband’s memberships for three years at $9 per person per year. (After Steve and I started going out in 1987, he joined as well, for another outlay of cash for a “lifetime” membership.)
When the general manager stepped up and said, “Well, there have been some changes,” I knew the decision had been made not to honor the old contracts. According to a story in our local newspaper, the total number of lifetime members at this point—20 years later—is a few hundred.
To make a long story short, I listened to the general manager’s spiel—delivered with what was supposed to be a sympathetic smile plastered to her face—about what a great deal I was going to get by rejoining, given that I had been a member.
Did I get my money’s worth out of Courtsouth over those 20 years? Without question.
Here’s what I don’t get. In deciding not to honor the lifetime memberships, the new owner (who bought the gym chain in the past year or two) is making it clear that he values the comparatively small sum he might get from his former lifetime members more than he does loyalty. It’s just dumb. Negative word of mouth spreads—I’ve read while doing marketing research—to seven times more people than positive word of mouth. We just can’t wait to tell our friends how some company treated us badly.
So, of course, I’ve been complaining to everyone I know.
And Courtsouth has lost my business. The “great” deal the general manager offered me and my husband was nearly twice the monthly fee we’re paying to the Rush, the club we’ve now joined. Well, we’re not really paying a monthly fee because I bought four years’ worth of membership up front. But averaged out, it’s significantly cheaper.
The good news is that the Rush is larger—with twice as many aerobic machines and weight machines as well as many more options in both categories. Plenty of benches, Olympic bars, plates, dumbbells, and fixed bars too. It’s also cleaner, which isn’t a bad thing.
So I’m irritated that I had to spend the money to join a new club, but doing so has given my motivation a nice kick. I also have a new workout partner—my sister-in-law, whom I’ve been training at an extremely minimal gym at my brother’s office complex. She’s had a membership to the Rush but hadn’t been using it . . . so now we can take advantage of the club together.
The May 2006 issue of Fitness magazine offers a one-page article called “Fast-track your strength training.” I was pleased to see that the five tips offered reflect the strategy I use in my workouts and in my trainee’s workouts.
Here goes:
1. “Move quickly from upper to lower body.”
This tip alone can save tons of time. Why sit around between sets with your muscles getting cold, your energy draining away, and your butt preventing others from using gym equipment? Do a set of pushups, then move right to lunges. When you’re done with the lunges, do some lat pulldowns, then some calf raises. You get the picture.
When I’m working out my trainee, I also change the order of the exercises so that no two workouts are the same. As she finishes a movement, I’ll announce the next movement, and we go right to it.
2. “Drop the weight.”
This tip is about performing drop sets, which I also like to call “down the rack.” It’s easy to do with machines that have weight stacks, and easy to do if you have room to line up a set of dumbbells. Do your first set (post warm-up) with the heaviest weight you’ll use for that movement that day. Do as many reps as you can with good form. Immediately drop the weight and do as many reps as you can with good form. Drop the weight again and go for it. You get the picture.
A single drop set is often all I need of a particular movement. It’s fast, and it’s effective.
3. “Work two muscle groups at once.”
This is about doing movements that involve more than one muscle group. I’m not a big fan of these exercises, but I do believe in supersetting nearby muscle groups–for example, performing a set of dumbbell front raises for the anterior deltoids, then immediately switching to bicep curls or hammer curls.
4. “Balance on one leg.”
I ought to be doing this, especially as we need exercise to maintain balance as we get older.
5. “Team up on one muscle.”
Supersets again, but this time doing multiple movements back to back for the same bodypart–say, leg presses followed by lunges.
Bottom line: by increasing intensity and refusing to waste time sitting on your duff, you can get the weight portion of your workout done in 30 to 45 minutes tops. Unless you’re a powerlifter or preparing for a bodybuilding or figure competition, you don’t need more time than that to increase strength and build muscle.
Trainer Alycea Ungaro, quoted in the May issue of Fitness magazine, advises us to "focus on pulling your abs in and up for every move–even when it’s not an ab exercise."
A good suggestion.
Also, when you’re stuck in traffic or sitting at your desk, it helps to practice pulling your navel toward your spine–and to tighten your glutes and thighs repeatedly.
Every little bit helps.
I’ve mentioned the National Weight Control Registry before–a collection of individuals who have lost 30 pounds or more and maintained the loss for a year or more. Various researchers have studied these people’s experiences and written about their weight-maintenance success. Here you can read some of their findings.
Well, now I am eligible to join them, having gone from 162 pounds in mid-September 2003 to 132 pounds in April 2005. (Yes, you read that right–it took me more than a year and a half to lose it.)
By the time I get the questionnaire and respond, I will have maintained for a year. Woo-hoo!
I’m now 128 pounds and shooting for 125 next month, when I’m planning to wear a very foxy dress while singing torch songs at my brother’s wedding reception. That’s another story.
I’ve just submitted an info-request form at the NWCR website, and presumably a more detailed questionnaire will be mailed to me. I’ll keep you posted.
Getting back to the slow pace of my weight loss: The morality tale is, don’t be stupid like me and refuse to count calories. Don’t be stupid like me and say to yourself, "Sheesh, I don’t know why I can’t get off this plateau. I’m eating healthy; I’m working out. What gives?"
Newsflash: that’s a sign that you’re eating (albeit healthily) exactly enough calories to maintain your weight. Want to lose fat? 1) Exercise. 2) Count calories and write down the food value of absolutely everything that enters your mouth. 3) Eat fewer calories than you need to maintain, but don’t starve yourself. It works!
MSNBC.com has posted a Forbes article called "How we gain weight and keep it on."
Here’s the blurb:
Weight-gain is not a head cold or a boil that magically appears overnight. Like muscle, it’s something that increases gradually with time and with your complete awareness and collaboration.
The amusing thing is the deck to the story: "Think it’s just Twinkies, beer, and sloth? Guess again." Actually, I did think those were primary factors.
The piece goes on to explain that, um, junk food, excess alcohol, and lack of exercise are factors that encourage obesity. Makes you wonder who wrote the deck and what he or she was thinking.
Yes, the article mentions other factors as well—aging, stress, frequent restaurant meals. But the bottom line is what you already know: eating too much and moving too little will make you fat.
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that stick-thin Nicole Richie is the cover model for the current issue of Lucky magazine? This poor woman looks like a skeleton with a hairdo. I’m not trying to make light of those who have eating disorders, but I question the magazine’s willingness to promote eating disorders by putting someone so unhealthy looking on the cover.
Women’s magazines tend to drive me nuts (not nuts enough not to buy them) because of the physiques they feature–among other things.
Fitness magazine is one of the worst for featuring skeletal “exercise models” who look as though they’ve never touched a dumbbell in their lives.
If you appreciate seeing women with some muscle tone, Oxygen magazine, on the other hand, features gals who train with weights and look like it. I’m not talking about steroid-bulked hulkettes but good-looking women with a level of muscular development that’s attainable without ’roids or HGH (just lots and lots of hours in the gym).
The February issue of More magazine includes a two-part article written by two friends who have entirely different approaches to food and body weight. One woman is a size 12 who enjoys food and says that once she made peace with her (not really very large) body, she got a lot more sane about food. She talks about her irritation with her friend who wears a size 6 and follows a very regimented food plan.
The regimented friend also has her say, explaining that she used to be overweight and has been able to lose weight and keep it off by participating in a 12-step program. Her program requires her to weigh or measure everything she eats, and she follows very specific, indeed, rigid rules. She never deviates from her food plan–which means never eating dessert or drinking wine, for instance.
Although the article was interesting, I was somewhat bothered that it seemed to suggest that rigid rules (and zero indulgences) are required in order to maintain weight loss. The successes of the people who belong to the National Weight Control Registry suggest otherwise.
In a nutshell, NWCR members are people who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for at least a year. (Once I get to the one-year anniversary of my weight loss, I plan to sign up.) From what I read, these successful "losers" stay on track through exercise, portion control, and healthy food choices. Portion control and exercise in particular help give people the flexibility to have dessert now and then–unlike the size 6 woman in More. It’s great that she’s maintained her loss, and it may be that rigid control is the ticket for her. I just don’t think that works–or is necessary–for most of us.
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