Exercise 60 Minutes a Day

The LA Times published this article summarizing recent research on women and weight gain. The research indicates that women who don’t want to gain weight over time and who don’t want to diet should exercise 60 minutes a day at moderate intensity.

Genetically women’s bodies are designed to increase body fat stores as the body ages. So women are constantly battling their DNA if they want to remain thin. If you aren’t willing to be super intentional about nutrition, regular exercise is the only way to control weight.  And despite what late night infomercials tell you, 15 minutes a day won’t do it.

When I start with someone who wants to lose significant amounts of weight but hasn’t been living a healthy lifestyle of exercise and intentional nutrition, I tell them that it’s like a conversion: you really need to begin to see your life differently; you’ll need to slowly change the way you manage and spend your time; you’ll need to see an hour spent exercising as not a “waste” but a valuable use of your time; and you’ll need to start making more direct connections between your body and what you put in it, recognizing that food is not neutral.

This kind of conversion is a slow process, but a worthwhile one in my opinion.

Time is often the biggest challenge for people. I think something can be learned from my wife’s philosophy: when she goes to do 1.5 hours of hot yoga, she often says that besides improving her health and posture it’s “giving her an extra day with her grandkids.”

That’s not a bad trade.

Do They Float to the Top? Evidence for Supplements

Here’s a visual representation of the effectiveness of popular supplements from Information is Beautiful.

Check out the “Show Me” interactive option on the right hand side of the image. You can focus the information to particular conditions. Amazing.

I’ve included a screen grab below. Keep in mind this still doesn’t do it justice. Check out the interactive original to see its full value.

(Thanks to FreshMD for drawing this to my attention.)

Canadian Fitness Levels Plummet

Statistics Canada released a shocking report on the overall health of Canadians in January. (Here’s a summary of the report.)

The study found that between 1981 and 2009 fitness levels have plummeted in Canada.

From the report:

“Fitness scores for children and adolescents were less favourable in 2007-2009 than in 1981.  For boys and girls in all age groups, flexibility and muscular strength scores were lower in 2007-2009, and mean BMI, waist circumference and the sum of five skinfolds were higher.”

“This paper provides the first comprehensive assessment of the fitness of Canadian children and youth in a generation.  The results demonstrate a significant deterioration since 1981, regardless of sex or age.  In particular, muscular strength and flexibility have decreased, and all measures of adiposity have increased.  Children are taller, heavier, fatter and weaker than in 1981. Previous research predicts that a population decline in fitness, as observed here, may result in accelerated non-communicable disease development, increased health care costs, and loss of future productivity.”

We really are victims of our technology: high caloric food is cheaper; we spend more time sitting down looking at screens then ever before;  and machines do so much of our physical labour for us. It seems that families need to take a radical approach to raising their kids in order to keep them healthy. We need to say “no” to “more” – not just to unhealthy food or video games, but to busy-ness in general. Saying no to a few things allows us to spend more time preparing healthy food, and more time getting outdoors and active with our kids.

As the father of two little girls, I’m mostly preaching to myself right now. I find that it’s my penchant to keep busy with work that gets in the way of creating a healthy environment for my family.

Low Back Pain

Here’s an interesting study published in The Spine Journal. It did a systematic review of the effectiveness of the following prevention interventions aimed at reducing back pain in working-aged adults:

1. Exercise
2. Ergonomic/back education
3. Stress Management
4. Lumbar back support belts
5. Shoe inserts
6. Programs for reducing lifting tasks at work

In turns out only one of these was effective at all: exercise.

But the ‘exercise’ was specific to low back care. So the study is not saying that going out and running around the block will cure your back pain. It’s saying that intentional exercise aimed at strengthening and adding mobility to your back is the best remedy for low back pain.

Almae Matres meet in National Final

Yes, Almae Matres is a word. It’s plural for Alma Mater, which means “nourishing mother”. (I know, that’s kinda weird.)

I played volleyball for both Trinity Western University and the University of Calgary back in the 90s. Well, they met for the first time in the CIS Men’s Volleyball National Championship on March 14th. Trinity was ranked 4th going in and upset the number 1 ranked Laval Rouge et Or to get to the final. Calgary was ranked 6th and upset the 2nd (Alberta) and 3rd (Dalhousie) ranked teams to reach the final.

Calgary defeated Trinity Western in the final 3 games to 1 (25-22,25-21-23-25,27-25).

Was I happy with the result? You bet. Trinity won the championship a few years ago and Calgary was due.

But congrats to both teams. It is no small feat to reach the National Championship.

It’s a Girl!!!!

Lucy Naomi Goode was born at home into water at 1:42PM on Thursday, January 28th with midwives Lisa and Gillian attending. Christie was in labour for fifteen hours and was truly amazing.

I’ve posted details of the birth and her name on my other blog here. And there are lots of photos on my flickr site here.

TIP: Livestrong.com

I’ve never been a fan of calorie-counting with my clients. Most of the time people need to adjust what they eat, rather than how much.

But I’ve been converted to the idea of keeping track of your calories for a season. After all, it’s so easy to forget just how many calories certain meals really contain.

Recently I began using Livestrong.com for this. It has a lot of great functions for the health enthusiast and among them is a very user-friendly calorie counter function called MyPlate.

Let me show you how MyPlate works by calculating my calorie totals for the day so far (it’s just after lunch as I write this).

First, you create a profile on the site and enter in some of you personal information (age, weight, activity level) etc. From there the website will recommend a daily calorie amount, or you can select your own number.

In my case below, I’ve decide on 3000 calories per day (I’m a big guy and am fairly active):

As the day progresses you can enter exactly what you’ve eaten. The site actually has the menu labels for a lot of brand items. Users can also enter items themselves, including name brands and personal recipes. So the selection is always growing.

I had some cranberry juice early this morning before yoga, so I searched for it by name and this came up:

It then asks me when and how much:

I do this for everything I’ve eaten so far today:

(Just glancing at this I can see that I’m not getting enough fiber.)

Once I’ve entered in the food I’ve eaten I turn to entering my activities. The website has a very long list of possible activities to select from: everything from running to watching TV (I’m not kidding).

I was at Bikram’s Hot Yoga this morning, so I made this choice:

Using my weight, it calculates the number of calories burned and subtracts that from my overall totals:

My day isn’t done yet, but I can already see what my net totals are so far:

Cool, eh?

The site also has some nice features on the side bar, including this breakdown of calorie type break down that changes as you update your totals:

(I need more protein today.)

It will also break down your food consumption to show you where you’ve gotten most of your calories. In this case, it’s the soup I had for lunch.

In addition, you can keep track of how much water your drinking during the day:

It takes about 15 minutes a day to stay on top of it. And I confess it’s not always an easy discipline to remember to do. (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’ve gone over my 3000 daily calorie total on the days I forgot to keep track.)

Personally I keep track of my food and exercise in a separate journal and then enter it into MyPlate later.

Give it a try and let me know what you think!

(Special thanks to Harry, for suggesting this website to me in the first place.)

P.S. Dear readers, I may not write a post for a few weeks. Baby #2 is due any day now and when he or she comes I’ll drop of the grid for a while. Wish me luck!

TIP: Vitamin D for Colds and Cancer

I don’t know about you, but I had always been lead to understand that the reason we get sick in the fall and winter months is because it’s… well, cold. This never really made sense because, I usually dressed… well, warmly. So what really gives?

It turns out that it has to do with Vitamin D.

The further away from the equator we are, the less sunlight we receive during the fall and winter months. This results in less Vitamin D3 being manufactured by the skin. And it seems that it is this drop in Vit. D3 which makes us all more susceptible to becoming sick.

But it doesn’t stop with seasonal flu. Vitamin D3 supplementation can help with all sorts of disease prevention, including cancer.

The research around this vitamin has been blowing my mind, and I’ve only scratched the surface. Let’s just say that Vit. D has moved to the top of my vitamin supplentation list.

Here are a few links:

Epidemic influenza and vitamin D

Vit. D3 results in 60% drop in cancer rates

More on Cancer and Vit D.

… specifically in Colon Cancer

Vitamin D Council

And I don’t appear to be the only one using more Vit D.

(Thanks to Dr. Pierre for pointing me toward this research.)

Low Fat, High Fat, Your Fat, My Fat

It’s becoming more and more accepted in mainstream thought that certain fats are good and essential and should be regularly eaten. But it is still common for people to believe they need a “low fat diet”, even though there is a growing group of health experts (Fat Wars, Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill for example) who argue that a high, healthy-fat diet (i.e. 30% of total calories coming from fat) will not make you increase your body fat. Hopefully articles like this will slowly shift people’s understanding.

Menu Labelling

Interesting article by Leslie Beck on menu-labeling laws. Would we change the way we eat if we knew how many calories a menu item had? For example, knowing that the average person needs 2000 calories a day, would you be so quick to order that Starbucks Blueberry Score if you knew it was 470 calories? Perhaps not.