Author Archives: allan
Author Archives: allan
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.
This limb represents our commitments and restraints. In this part, we focus on kindness, truthfulness, non-stealing, accountability, and not coveting.
This limb relates to our observances, being pure, working hard, and our religious practice.
This limb is the physical practice that most of us recognize when we think of yoga, the movement, the stretching, the meditation.
This limb recognizes the life force and energy of the universe.
This limb relates to releasing yourself from your likes and dislikes.
This limb is about uninterrupted concentration as a means of fulfilling your dreams.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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:
https://40plusfitnesspodcast.com/aging-well-dr-mark-williams/
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.
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:
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Here are a few tools you may want to invest in (or seek out at the gym):
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Ask yourself, how do I wish to feel and perform tomorrow? – Mike Adams
Yes, we're staying on our “play” theme for just one more episode. In episode 136, I explained how playing sports can help keep you motivated to workout as a way of improving your performance on the court, field, or in this case, golf course. Our guest, Suzanne Clark, author of Play Golf Forever, shows you how to make sure that you're in shape for golf, but these lessons are applicable to any sport you choose to do.
Key take aways from this episode:
Sarcopenia is a muscle wasting that affects us as we age. It can begin as early as age 30. Most of us will lose 1% of our muscle mass each year, which means we've lost 30% or more by the time we're in our 60s. Resistance exercise is the best way to slow or stop sarcopenia.
To avoid injury on the course, players should:
With attention to your body you can ensure you stay healthy and uninjured. And then you can play golf forever.
Contact Suzanne Clark at: Fitter Forever