Here’s my advice: ignore them. I know this is easier said than done, but I want you to focus on this. You’re not embarking on an exercise program so that people like you. You’re doing it to save your life. You’re doing it so that you can be stronger, run faster, live longer. Your goals are yours, and yours alone. Others in the gym don’t care if you fail or succeed. But you do.

Those others? They were beginners once too. They might have done biceps curls in the squat rack or tried talking to someone who was in the middle of a set . But 9 times out of 10 even the “regulars” can be pretty clueless, and that includes the personal trainers. The seasoned veterans who DO know what they’re doing didn’t learn everything overnight. It took time and practice and a willingness to ask questions and search for accurate information. And yes, even make mistakes.

Please don’t give up. Our kids are growing up in a world where everyone’s getting increasingly more sedentary. Technology has provided us with myriad more opportunities to move less. What we need now are people willing to buck that trend and establish another that moves us in the direction of more activity and a healthier future. They are people like you, who choose the first of the year to start something new.

You can do that, but you have to keep going.  Little by little, bit by bit.

And all those naysayers at the gym? I hope you kick their asses some day. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

I’m counting on you.

My 8-year-old took the California Standardized Test over the past few weeks. I had asked her if she was nervous beforehand, she said no…she was looking forward to it because following every test session her teacher was going to give snacks: Goldfish crackers. That’s a rare purchase for us at home because I’m not a fan of processed crackers. But what I’m even less a fan of is equating a job well done with a food prize.

Now, granted, Goldfish crackers aren’t the most evil of concoctions, and I’m actually delighted that the reward was merely crackers rather than sweets even though the idea that we need to offer snacks to mark a good performance (no offense to her teacher, whom I adore!). How about playing a fun game or offering extra recess time?

Great job! Here, have a cookie.

While the above is a mild example of a “food as reward” pairing, what happens when that’s taken a step further and kids are rewarded with unhealthy foods? I learned of a school from out-of-state that threw a junk food-heavy shindig as a spectacular end to their testing weeks. These celebrations are organized by adults who look back at what they ate as children and how many wonderful memories of youth it brings back, and want to share these good feelings with the younger generation. Sadly, these childhood memories don’t mesh with the reality of today, and the current state of our collective waistlines.

Equally important is the mixed message that this type of event sends. On the one hand, there are obesity awareness programs at schools, teaching kids healthy eating, encouraging them to increase their fruit and vegetable consumption. On the other hand, they throw all of that out the window with such a festival, as if acknowledging with a wink, “You know all that healthy-food stuff we taught you? Well, we don’t believe it either.”

I freely admit that rewarding ourselves with food is not a new concept. Special meals for birthdays, graduations, promotions, etc. are to be expected. Sharing joy across the table is part of being human. Meals unite us. Food is pleasure in a small, legal package –  and a very powerful motivator. I’m neither disputing that nor trying to squash long-established mealtime traditions.

But you know those ‘special events’ that we chose to celebrate? Well, every day has become special. TGIF? Why raise the bar so high by waiting ’til the end of the week? “It’s Tuesday, lets celebrate!” Indulging yourself has gone from a once-luxury to something that’s commonplace. With food as accessible as it is, in the varieties in which it’s available, we really run the danger of rewarding ourselves into a host of health problems.

As a result, we do our children a disservice by rewarding them with food when the opportunities for rewards seem never-ending and the quality of food has degraded. And some of you might gripe that I’m taking all the fun out of eating. That may be, but with staggering childhood obesity rates that are NOT getting better, and the knowledge that these children are likely to grow into obese adults, it’s time to stop joking around.

Obesity: You'll know it when you see it...or will you?

We need to be careful with how we throw labels around — psychologists are particularly prone to this, and sometimes we don’t consider the repercussions from careless diagnoses, official or not. Some of these terms are derived in ways other than how you’d expect. A perfect example of this is the term “obese”. Interestingly enough, while we imagine an obese individual to be someone who is very fat, it’s possible for an individual with low body fat and a LOT of muscle (think Mr. Olympia) to end up in the same category. That’s because the official designation of “obese” is based not on fat, but on height and weight, using the Body Mass Index. But once you label someone as “obese”, our imaginations run off with what else that means…

In health terms, an individual is described as obese when he/she has a BodyMass Index (BMI) of 30 or higher. BMI is calculated as:

weight (kg)/[height (m)]².

That’s all. It simply means that the person has attained a certain, greater degree of overweight that has knocked them into a certain category. Note that there is no direct measurement of fat involved, and in fact, the correlation of BMI with body fat is rough and imperfect, but “kinda, sorta good enough”. However, in the realm of public health, collecting reliable data is critical to making accurate assessments about populations, and it’s easier to measure height and weight (which are fairly straightforward measurements) than to try to gather body fat data (generally more time consuming and fraught with user-errors). And because of that “kinda, sorta good enough” correlation, the BMI is used to determine whether a person gets knocked into the “obese” category. The BMI was never designed to diagnose individuals, as has begun happening. If you’ve ever played “Wii Fit” and wanted to throw the balance board at your TV screen, you probably know what I mean — BMI is all over the place and being misused regularly. Wikipedia does an unusually good job of describing the problems with overinterpreting BMI here.

So the BMI, the measure by which we determine whether someone is, or isn’t, overweight/obese, is simply a number that doesn’t have anything to do with body fat, really. HOWEVER, Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines “obese” as “having excessive body fat”. Doesn’t that seem wrong? “Fat percentage” is not a variable in the BMI formula (have I stated that enough times in one post?), but the word “obese” by definition is based on body fat. And the designation of “obese” as it’s used in our daily lives becomes painfully emotional to many people.

I came across an interesting article (via Twitter, thanks to @AliciaMarieBODY) about an obese woman who managed to avoid looking at herself as she gradually put on fat, thereby ignoring the changes to her body, only to be confronted by her physician with the reality of her physical state. She knew she was heavy, but grossly underestimated her actual weight. When her doctor told her she was obese, her response was,

“It may sound unlikely, but I was genuinely shocked. In my mind I was far from obese. To me, obese was beyond fat  -  with connotations of someone who was greedy, lazy and uneducated and that wasn’t me.”

Wow! To her, it wasn’t simply excess weight or even fat, it was something much worse than that. It was a character judgment. How frightening that a simple measurement (BMI), calculated from two very objective measurements (height and weight), would be interpreted so subjectively.

Even the word itself — “OH-BEEEESE” — sounds unpleasant and bears a resemblance to ‘obscene’, so it’s not surprising that there are several levels of negative connotations wrapped around it. Obese suggests extremely fat to the point of being a circus sideshow. It sounds hideous and evil.

So, we’ve transitioned from simple body measurements to their interpretation as body fat to something that’s nasty. The issue is no longer a number, but rather a reflection of who the person is as a human being. That’s a heavy emotional hit for someone who sees themselves as merely “carrying extra pounds”…and then is confronted with the loaded label of “obese”.

Taking all these things into consideration, it’s not surprising that the woman’s quote above reveals something more insidious that merits consideration: even the obese are prejudiced against the obese.

While I’m not recommending that we take “obese” out of the English language, I hope that people understand how that designation arose. And even more importantly, that it’s not an immutable life sentence. It doesn’t mean you’re bad, lazy, gluttonous, stupid or anything else negative that some people ascribe to that label. It does mean that you should take stock of your habits and see if you’re one of those who needs to reduce their body fat levels to get themselves out of a high-risk category for a number of diseases.

If most people have an opportunity to (1) eat a doughnut or (2) abstain in favor of their fitness goals, which one will win out?

Eat like Homer, look like Homer. (www.sfgate.com)

My money’s on the doughnut, and here’s why: most people don’t have a truly clear idea of what they want as far as fat loss goes. They want to lose pounds or “get into shape”. Some just want to “look good”. What do all of those mean? They’re very fuzzy goals, and as a result, achieving them will be difficult. How will you know you’ve reached the point where you’re “in shape”? What if you think you “look good” but then pass a mirror or see yourself in a photo and realize that you don’t look as good as the person next to you? What if you still “feel fat”? All these things make it hard to claim success…

And that’s why the doughnut is such a formidable opponent. In contrast to the uncertainties of fat loss, you know what you’ll get with the doughnut. The melt-in-your-mouth sweetness, the sugar rush…the desire for more. Those pounds you want to lose are so far away. The doughnut is here and immediate. It’s tangible. You can practically taste it.

Add to that, it’s easy to justify eating the doughnut, right? How much of a difference will one doughnut really make?

All of this is why it’s important to not only have clearly defined goals for fat loss, but also an understanding of the day-to-day steps you need to take to get there. Success is determined by your daily efforts. Your daily efforts are determined by your long-range goals.

When you know specifically where you want to go, and are aware of what you need to do every day, resisting temptation becomes easier. When the sun sets every evening, you can claim victory for another day, and the resulting changes to your body become your reward.

I had been training with a pair of 20-pounders that were purchased individually, so they were slightly different in form. The shape disparity was subtle in the heads but noticeable in that one dumbbell had a teensy-bit wider bar, making the grip feel different. Well, that would always throw me off, because the thicker bar made me tire faster, or so I thought. I searched PubMed for a viable explanation and went so far as to contact exercise scientist Mike Nelson about whether he’d seen research on the connection between grip diameter and fatigue. And then — DUH! — it occurred to me to actually weigh the stupid things!

If it says "20", it MUST weigh 20#, right? Right?

Okay, it wasn’t exactly twenty pounds, which surprised me…but not as much as what I got weighing the OTHER dumbbell:

Well, THIS one's gotta be 20#, right? EEEEEK!

Gee, that explains the sensation of imbalance! A full two pounds-worth. That may not seem like much, but when you’re dealing with twenty pounds on your triceps, it makes quite a difference.

I emerged from this experience somewhat wiser, all the while hoping Mike didn’t think I was a total moron. Incidentally, I happened to weigh my 30-pounders and both came up as thirty-one pounds. At least they were consistent.

Caveat emptor.

]]> http://ultranatomy.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/weigh-your-weights/feed/ 4 ULTRAnatomy Weights20.5 Weights18.5 http://ultranatomy.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/what-would-you-do/ http://ultranatomy.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/what-would-you-do/#comments Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:14:31 +0000 ultranatomy http://ultranatomy.wordpress.com/?p=319 ]]> If you’re cleaning up after breakfast and come across this, what do you do?

C'mon, it's just a bite...

You’re done eating and not hungry…but there’s still a little oatmeal and PB&J left over. Not worth putting aside in the fridge because no one’s going to eat it later. So where does it go? Into the trash…or your mouth?

Consider your answer then read this.

IHOP: Come hungy. Leave in an ambulance.

It IS possible to eat healthfully at even the most questionable of restaurants. We visited the International House of Pancakes one morning, where, among all the 1000-calorie entrees (bless IHOP’s high-carb heart, they provide a basic nutritional breakdown — printed in unobtrusive light gray — on their in-store menu) I found some remarkably reasonable ones. I dined on a modest grilled tilapia fillet with steamed broccoli florets. Forgoing the Hollandaise sauce (which, bless them again, they serve in a small dish on the side), I sprinkled on mild jalapeno Tabasco sauce instead. I admit, it’s a more unusual choice for breakfast, but it worked for me!

My next point: the fish was wonderfully petite. It wasn’t worthy of any “Oh, you should have seen the SIZE of that fillet” comments. It was served on a plate, not a platter. And it was perfect. As a culture, we’ve become accustomed to expecting mega-sized entrees with enough food to feed a family in sub-Saharan Africa for a week. We expect to finish the meal stuffed, unbuckling our belts and leaning back in our chairs with a huge sigh. And, oh, do we love getting a great deal! So much so that at some point, we ignore the fact that the food may be of lesser quality, as long as we get a lot of it.

Having said all that, do you really even need to read what I’m going to type next?

Is it any surprise that as portion sizes have increased — as “value” has increased — so have waistlines and with that the incidence of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis and certain types of cancer? Factor in the cost of health care, and that “value” maybe a bit too expensive for all of us…

However, even I am not immune to the siren song of the most addictive of processed hell- foods. Here’s a personal example:

"Difficult to resist, the Dark Side is."

My family and I were at a reception where coffee, juice and doughnuts were served. Now, an offering like that makes me break out in hives (even bagels & cream cheese would have been better), but until I have enough money to create “healthy food” endowments for the places that I frequent, I’m stuck. While I got coffee, my husband got that obscene fried frosted round thing. He offered me a bite.

I accepted, not sure why, maybe just because it’d been so long since I’d tried one. I don’t remember the exact order of the events that followed, but I think  saliva flooded my mouth, I got a tingling sensation, a major sugar rush that warmed my whole body…all of which preceded an Id-like need for another bite. I don’t know how much more I consumed before I came to my senses, but the intensity of my lustful reaction took me aback. It was then that I decided doughnuts were the creation of the devil and should be rounded up and burned at the stake.

For that moment that I was under the doughnut’s spell, I had an epiphany of sorts. I saw how easily one could, with minimal practice, polish off a half dozen doughnuts before realizing what happened. Those junky abominations are engineered for lightening-fast consumption. You hardly need to chew the thing before it dissolves! The rapid sugar delivery to the bloodstream is drug-like.

Food doesn’t twack me like that most of the time, but this one did. And then I thought, if it made me, a true sugar shunner, suffer a momentary lapse of reason, how much damage could it do to someone who is more susceptible to the influence of these foods? How much would it test someone’s resolve…and what are the chances that, hypnotized by the promise of a blissful sugar stupor, one would even remember to resist? In general I try to offer kinder, gentler suggestions for changing eating behaviors, but in this case I’d recommend that you never let one of these arteriosclerotic bombs near your lips.

No, not even into your line of sight. Stay away!