The Yoga Lifestyle | Doron Hanoch

Doron Hanoch comes to the 40+ Fitness Podcast to discuss his book, the Yoga Lifestyle.  We go beyond the basics of the physical yoga practice and explore ways to take yoga outside the studio.

If you want to develop discipline and get the benefits of yoga, you have to show up.  Don't worry about what you may or may not accomplish that day, but get into the habit of making sure you are there and then get present.  The benefits will come.

Benefits of Yoga:

• Flexibility
• Strength
• Breathing better
• Mind training

Doron then discussed a 1 – 2 breathing technique for relaxation and falling asleep quickly.

 

Links

Doron Yoga

Yoga Retreats

Facebook

Youtube

Art and Photography website 

 

 

Yoga's Healing Power | Ally Hamilton

Yoga’s Healing Power | Ally Hamilton

Ally Hamilton found yoga as a senior at Columbia. She expected it to be too easy for her and was pleasantly surprised by the true physical challenge. But she was even more surprised to experience the other improvements in her life that came from a regular practice.

In her book, Yoga's Healing Power, Ally goes through the eight limbs of a yoga practice.

Yamas

This limb represents our commitments and restraints. In this part, we focus on kindness, truthfulness, non-stealing, accountability, and not coveting.

Niyamas

This limb relates to our observances, being pure, working hard, and our religious practice.

Asana

This limb is the physical practice that most of us recognize when we think of yoga, the movement, the stretching, the meditation.

Pranayama

This limb recognizes the life force and energy of the universe.

Pratyahara

This limb relates to releasing yourself from your likes and dislikes.

Dharana

This limb is about uninterrupted concentration as a means of fulfilling your dreams.

Dhyana

This limb relates to a state of being where there are no borders between you and the world.  It relates to having discipline in your practice.

Samadhi

This limb is a state of flow and enlightenment.  Difficult to achieve but a blessing when you do.

 

If you start to treat your body as the gift it is, it shifts the way you feed it.

~ Ally Hamilton, Yoga's Healing Power

 

My apologies for the interruption by my dogs, but it really was a cool moment for me.

Learn more about Ally Hamilton at Yogis Anonymous.

Should I do yoga? | Julie Zuzek

Cracking the Aging Code | Josh Mitteldorf

In Cracking the Aging Code, Josh Mitteldorf does a deep dive into the science of aging.  His research has led him to some theories that differ quite a bit from what many of us may have believed were true.  Our body is programmed to destroy itself as we age.

As a part of this discussion, Josh explains why he doesn't believe Paleo or natural eating extend our lives.  Nor does he believe that anti-oxidant therapy make us more healthy.  In fact, anti-oxidants may shorten our lives.

The four core reasons we age:

Inflammation

Inflammation is important to help us address outside threats, but when we're older, this inflammation turns on us.  Inflammation attacks us, causing arthritis, atherosclerosis, and Alzheimer's disease. It is also associated with many types of cancer.

A high-carb diet is inflammatory.  Having extra bodyfat is inflammatory.  But our bodies are different and we have to experiment to find what works for us.

Immune System

The Thymus gland creates T-cells to fight viruses and bacteria.  As we age, the T-cells begin to turn on us and are linked to arthritis and macular degeneration fo the retina.

Apoptosis

This process of “cell death” is important to help the body get rid of damaged cells.  As we age, the process degrades resulting in two types of errors:  damaged cells may be missed, or healthy cells are destroyed.

Telomere Shortening

Each time a cell is divided to go on the telomeres, which are endcaps for the DNA helix shortened.  When the telomere reaches the end, the cell can no longer divide and effectively dies.

Links:

AgingAdvice.org

2 weeks to a younger brain | Dr. Gary Small

https://40plusfitnesspodcast.com/aging-well-dr-mark-williams/ ‎

Ketogenic diet for weight loss

My weight loss while on a ketogenic diet[/caption]

In this episode, I discuss how I used the ketogenic diet for weight loss.  Ketosis is a physical phenomenon, where your body adapts to using fat for energy instead of sugar. Susan, who you met on episode 142, joined me on this conversation so she can ask questions as I went.  I switched my eating to allow me to go into ketosis so I could drop some weight I'd gained over the past few months.

To get into ketosis, you lower your carbohydrates (carbs) to 20 grams or less and you increase your fat to make up the calories. You'll keep your protein moderate to ensure it doesn't spike your blood sugar.

In ketosis, your body burns the fat and produces ketones.  These ketones can be used by the brain as fuel.  In fact, most of the science on ketosis shows that the brain favors ketones.   I know I feel better when I'm in ketosis.

Concerns with Ketosis

• Ketoacidosis – This is a dangerous condition that is typically limited to type I diabetics. In this condition, your ketone level gets dangerously high and the blood sugar is also high.  This is a very rare condition and not something you'll
• Compliance – The ketogenic diet is difficult.  It is not easy to go from being a sugar burner to a fat burner.  Staying at 20 grams of carbs per day is very limiting.  Fortunately, once you're in ketosis, you may be able to ratchet up your carb intake.
• Carb withdrawal/Keto flu – During the transition, you'll likely have some fatigue, effectively feeling like you have the flu.
• Medications – If you're a diabetic and take meds to help manage your blood sugar, you should talk to your doctor.  You'll have to monitor yourself very closely.  The ketogenic diet can be an effective way to reverse diabetes.

Ketogenic Diet Tools

You should be able to feel that you're in ketosis, but there are tools to measure ketones.  To be in nutritional ketosis you will have a ketone reading of 0.5 – 7:0.  You can measure ketones three ways:

• Keto-sticks are a cost effective way to measure the ketone bodies in your urine.  However, once you get fat adapted, you won't be excreting ketones, and they will stop working.  This makes them great for showing that you're in ketosis when you first start.
• The Precision Plus with ketone strips can measure the ketones in your blood.  This is the most accurate way to determine when you're in ketosis.
• The Ketonix is a tool you can use to measure ketones in your breath.  This is a pain and mess free way to do the measurement.  I haven't seen any science to prove this tool is as accurate as the blood.

Other Considerations for the Ketogenic Diet

• Tweak your protein intake based on your exercise intensity.
• Make sure you're getting enough sodium and potassium.  With a ketogenic diet, you'll lose water weight and with that some electrolytes.
• You'll likely lose some water weight early in the ketogenic diet.
• There are extraneous sources of ketones that you can take to increase the ketones.  These can help when you need more energy.
• Medium-Chain Triglycerides (MCT), which is processed from coconut oil.  Because of the nature of this oil, it increased your ketone level quickly.  Just make sure you ease into using it as it can cause diarrhea.

Whether you choose to use ketosis as a way to lose weight, now you understand what it is when you hear someone talking about it.  More and more people are trying ketosis.

If you have any questions about the ketogenic diet, feel free to comment on this post.

Have a happy and healthy day!

Allan

Below are the links I mentioned in the podcast.

Keto-stix

Precision Plus with Keto Strips

Ketonix

Keto Clarity by Jimmy Moore

The scoop on ketosis with Jimmy Moore

 

Susan’s Success Story

Susan, a Forever Fitness client, comes to the 40+ Fitness Podcast to share her success story.

Susan reflects on her decision to work on her health and fitness when she turned 43.  She started by walking during her daughter's practiced volleyball.  She progressed from that to a group class after a friend won a free boot camp program and gave it to her.  She discovered that being in a community made doing the exercise much easier.

When she began focusing on weight lifting, she noticed how seeing others working hard gave her motivation to push herself.  She joined Forever Fitness Personal Training when she was looking to accelerate her progress.  She didn't always like the recommendations but she saw the results. Having a coach motivated her to push on.

Having a thyroid issue has always made it easy for her to gain weight.  Through managing her food and exercise, she managed to lose 40 lbs.  Her doctor was very impressed.  Her blood work looks much better and her need for thyroid meds has reduced.

 

How to maximize your functional fitness

Functional fitness is a term that has been made much more common with the creation and growth of crossfit.  Basically, functional fitness means training your body to deal with everyday activities.  When I work with my clients at Forever Fitness, I ask them to project their vision of health and fitness and then we can develop a program to get them there.  Functional fitness typically involves using non-traditional training equipment.

Define Functional Fitness

To train for functional fitness, you should start by defining your current (benchmark) state.  Do you have any physical limitations such as injuries or weaknesses?  What are your strengths?  What are the current demands on your body?  As you can tell, these questions are very individual to you.  Don't skip this step as it is critical to know the answers in order to design a program that will work for you.

Next, you'll determine what functional looks like to you.  This vision statement gives you a picture of what you want to be able to do.  For me, I want to be able to have the stamina to play sand volleyball.  I want to be able to move my body and objects without injuring myself, especially my lower back.

Focusing on functional fitness is going to push you to do workouts that are relevant.  As a result, you're much more like to stick with the program and meet your fitness goals.

Training for Functional Fitness

I strongly encourage you to hire a personal trainer to help develop a functional program.  It can be quite difficult to build an exercise program that will effectively hit on multiple fitness modalities and avoid injuries.  A dedicated personal trainer can help you get started and stay engaged as you build your functional fitness.

Part of your programming should focus on correcting your weaknesses.  Strengthening my core is integral for me to avoid back injury while I lift weights to build the strength I want.  I also need to focus on my mobility for the same reason.

After considering your weaknesses, you can get some work done to improve your strengths.  But it might take some patience to get your weaknesses addressed to a point it is safe to train strengths.  Again, that is an area where a personal trainer can help.  Once you're ready, you'll likely work on continuous improvement on your weak areas while you progressively push your strengths.

Functional Fitness Tools

Here are a few tools you may want to invest in (or seek out at the gym):

• Kettlebell – A ball with a handle in many different weights.  The awkward shape of the kettlebell makes it valuable across many fitness modalities (strength, balance, endurance).  An example of a good kettlebell exercise is the Russian kettlebell swing.  This exercise works endurance and builds strength across the posterior chain (back, butt, and hamstrings).
• Agility Ladder – A ladder-like piece of cloth or plastic that you lay on the floor.  The various exercises are to move through the ladder from side to side as you go through.  The object is to move through the ladder as quickly as possible to build agility and speed.
• Medicine Ball – A large, soft, weighted ball.  The most common exercises for the medicine ball are wall balls and medicine ball slams.  In the wall ball, you hold the ball at your chest facing a wall.  You squat and on way up you throw the ball (using your legs) up to a target that is 8 – 12 feet off the ground.  Medicine ball slams involve bringing the medicine ball over your head and throwing it against the floor.  Both of these exercises work endurance and strength.
• Battle Ropes – Long, thick (1 1/2 – 2 inch) ropes.  The length and thickness of the battle rope determines the intensity of the exercises.  The rope is attached to a wall or post and you grasp both ends of the rope.  Making various wave patterns builds endurance and strength.
• Weighted Sled – A sled that allows you to stack weights to add resistance.  You grasp the handles and using your legs you drive the sled forward as quickly as possible (much like pushing a car).
• Sandbags – Sandbags come in different sizes and weight.  Some have handles, but I find the ones without handles to be more effective for functional fitness as grasping them is harder.  You can build an entire workout using sandbags and bodyweight.
• Clubbells – Invented in India, clubbells are clubs with weighted ends.  Swinging the clubs helps build strength and thorasic mobility.
• Tires – Old truck and tractor tires provide for strength, endurance and power work when you work to flip and jump over them.
• Rubber Mallets/Sledge Hammer – Using tools like this to hit or pound a tire helps build strength and endurance, expecially grip strength.

Obviously, I've gone over a lot of exercises and you may not be able to picture all of them.  You can find examples on youtube, but I'd strongly encourage you to work with a trainer so you can maximize your functional fitness and avoid injury.

Uncommon exercises

The hidden toxins lurking in your food | Mike Adams

In his book, Food Forensics, Mike Adams (aka the “Health Ranger”) reveals some terrible toxins that lurk in the food we eat.  Mike has dedicated himself to performing laboratory evaluation of the foods we eat and reports the results.

Lead

Lead and other heavy metals are often in the food we eat, even when it is organic.  The key to avoiding toxins like lead is to look at the country of origin.  China and India have shown to have a higher contamination of heavy metals, such as lead.  Whereas the United States, Canada, and Europe is very clean.  Mike grows much of his own and I buy most of my vegetables and meat from local farmers.

Lead tends to be stored in our bones in place calcium. It does this when proper calcium intake is not sufficient. It is critical to get calcium from plants as our bodies are not able to absorb the mineral calcium that is provided by most supplements. As we age and our bones break down (osteopenia), lead that had accumulated in our bones over our lives can release lead, damaging our kidneys.

Bisphenol A (BPA)

BPA is a chemical in our plasticware. It is an endocrine disruptor. which means it will affect your hormones.  It can cause cancer in women and feminization in men.  This disruption can be quite devastating to your body.  You should avoid plasticware whenever you can, and you should never heat food in a plastic container.

Aspartame

I had an addiction to Diet Coke.  Over the years, people kept telling me I needed to stop.  It wasn't easy, but I managed to kick that habit.

The artificial sweetener, aspartame is poison.  It distorts our natural taste preferences, causing us to eat more.  It also causes us to choose unhealthy foods and beverages.  But you can re-adjust your taste threshold with some effort.

Lifetime Detox

The good news: our bodies can clean themselves if we work to avoid the toxins and eat things that can help us defend against those we can't.  Avoid the extreme detox supplements.  They can be quite dangerous.  Consider every meal an opportunity to detox.  You are constantly in the process of rebuilding your blood and body.  If you give your body good food, you will be building yourself with better, cleaner materials.

 

Sharable Quote:

Ask yourself, how do I wish to feel and perform tomorrow? – Mike Adams

 

Links:

Food Forensics

Health Ranger

Natural News

Caught in the dorito effect | Mark Schatzker

How to shop for good food