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After Thanksgiving, many of us descend into a tunnel of too little daylight and too many obligations. Even though the days start to lengthen by December 22 (although who notices the difference?), the sense of having too much to do and too little time to do it lasts through the New Year. Our response to the ever-growing to-do list is to drop the non-essentials. Unfortunately, exercise is one of the first “non-essentials” to disappear. The still-too-early sunsets make staying inside more appealing than driving in the dark to a gym. Stopping gym workouts, walks around the neighborhood, or Pilates class at the community center gives us that extra hour or two that our schedules demand right now. But it also may give us something we don’t want—a few extra pounds by the first of the year. The combination of holiday eating and less physical activity is a perfect way to gain weight (in case anyone wants to). Obviously, no one asks for the gift of holiday weight gain but if time will not stretch to incorporate those yoga stretches, what can you do? The answer is the exercise quickie. Short intense bouts of exercise, sometimes lasting no more than 2 minutes, can speed up your heart rate, burn off some calories and even make you feel less tired as your cells get more oxygen due to increased blood flow. Everyone, no matter how overscheduled and overcommitted, can fit 5 bouts of 2- minute exercise into the day. Here’s how to do it. 1. Whenever you climb steps, climb them faster. Going from basement to kitchen? Run up the steps so your heart rate goes rises. Are there steps at work alongside the elevator or escalator? Take them two at a time to stretch your legs. Even 30 seconds of moving fast up those steps will be beneficial. 2. Do you own an exercise machine such as a treadmill or bike? Set the timer for 2 minutes, get on, and move as fast as you can. Try to do this once a day. If you don’t have a timer, then set the microwave. In the time it takes to get water hot in the cup, you can get the blood flowing in your body and clear your head. 3. No time for yoga because you have a party when the class meets? Give yourself five extra minutes to get ready and take that time to do some yoga stretches on your bedroom carpet. 4. Is there a gym nearby where you usually spend at least an hour working out? Try a speeded-up workout. Do only one set of weight exercises instead of three but try to work out those muscle groups, like your back and shoulders, that might be tense and curled from too much time spend at a computer or over a kitchen counter. Get on a cardio machine and increase intensity but shorten duration. Try a machine that is hard for you, like a rower, or run instead of walking on the treadmill. Set the timer for no more than 5 minutes. You will be puffing and panting and feeling as if you had a 30-minute workout on a familiar machine. 5. Jump rope. You probably can’t do it for more than 45 seconds without tripping. But those 45 seconds will get your pulse rate up. 6. Run outside with your dog. Even 2 minutes in the fresh air will feel invigorating. 7. Need to take things down from a high shelf? Make stepping on and off a stool a step-climbing exercise. Do it fast (but don’t do it while balancing fragile Christmas ornaments). 8. Before going into that crowded, hot, noisy shopping mall, take a very brisk walk around the shopping area (if it is safe to do so). 9. Picking up your kids at school? Park as far away as you can and then walk quickly to the school. If you have time, do a fast jog around the block. 10. If you are traveling by plane, work out your upper arms by putting suitcases of your fellow passengers in the overhead compartments for them. Mine is going to be full of Florida pineapples so I would appreciate the help. | permalink | related link |    ( 2.8 / 153 )What happened to the traditional Thanksgiving menu? I was in the gym today, hungrily watching the Food Channel as one show after another presented ideas for Thanksgiving dinner. Turkey was featured but on one show it was slathered with truffle butter and doused with olive oil and in another rubbed with cayenne pepper and then deep-fried. Traditional white or corn bread stuffing was replaced with Japanese bread crumbs mixed with Italian cheeses and stuffed not in the turkey but into mushroom caps. Cranberry sauce became a cranberry salsa, and pumpkin pie a pumpkin cheesecake square. I know we have come a long way since the traditional October harvest fest of the Pilgrims that featured squash, potatoes, corn, beans, pumpkin , ducks, geese but probably no turkey. Few of us would want to make a truly traditional Pilgrim-type meal using lard and bacon grease for fat and attempting to cook over a fireplace while swatting away the flies. But we seem to have gone as far as we can in the other direction , serving as many different dishes as possible and making each with the richest and most caloric ingredients available. Pilgrims didn’t have pie; there was no flour and no sweeteners available. But these days we feel we must serve at least three different types of pie along with chocolate and nuts for the still hungry. Is anyone out there thinking about healthy food choices, weight problems, heart disease and diabetes or even indigestion? I am often asked what I am going to make for Thanksgiving and when I mention that beside the turkey, we will have several roasted vegetable dishes, fresh cranberry sauce and my low-fat pumpkin pie, I receive puzzled and sometimes critical responses. “You mean you don’t serve mashed potatoes with heavy cream, sweet potatoes loaded with butter and marshmallows, and stuffing made with sausage?” My answer is that I really like the people who come for Thanksgiving. and I feel obligated to make sure they leave the meal as healthy as when they sat down to eat. The family history of some of the guests includes heart disease and diabetes, and we all are constantly struggling to make sure we are not gaining weight. Thanksgiving is a time when we are all thankful we are together for yet another year. The Pilgrims were grateful that they had survived a terrible winter in which many of their original group had died and that the harvest that fall made it possible for the remnant to survive the coming winter. Perhaps we should learn from them and make sure that what we serve our guests this Thanksgiving will make it possible for them to continue to live a healthy life as well. | permalink | related link | ( 3.1 / 21 )People do extraordinary things to lose weight. On the Tyra Banks show on Nov 9th a guest talked about having staples inserted inside her ear (no, they are not sold at STAPLES) that somehow allowed her to control her eating. Another showed her tongue with a mesh cover sewn on that preventing her from swallowing food. She lived on a liquid diet. But the strangest, and, as the hostess said, the most disgusting, was swallowing tapeworm eggs. An entrepreneur who ran a tapeworm-weight loss clinic in Mexico extolled the virtues of having this parasite living in your intestinal tract and eating your food. Of course, the parasite—like a relative who overstays his welcome—doesn’t want to leave its cozy home once the patient has lost weight. So ejecting many feet of worm was a rather unpleasant end to this weight-loss regimen. All sorts of bad things happen when hungry worms reside in your gut. For example, malnutrition is a common problem since the worms do not just munch on excessive junk calories but consume all the good nutrients, too. And when you regain your weight once the worms are gone, are you going to swallow them for another round of weight loss? It is sad that these people who desperately want to lose weight do not realize that the most effective and safest method to control eating is to use their brain. Everyone’s brain comes with a built-in appetite control called serotonin. We all have serotonin, regardless of our weight. Many people think that serotonin only stabilizes mood. It does, but it contributes so much more. When enough serotonin is made and activated, this brain chemical tells us to stop eating. Losing weight requires eating less than you want. Serotonin makes you feel full and satisfied when you eat less than you want. There is only one problem. You can’t pump serotonin into your brain by taking pills. There is only one safe, natural and effective way of making new serotonin: Eat carbohydrates. Since the brain does not come with an owner’s manual, it took scientists to discover the connection between eating a potato, rice, pasta, bread, cereal or gumdrops and the ability of the brain to make new serotonin. With the exception of fruit, all kinds of carbohydrate will do this. But the carbohydrate has to be eaten alone. Protein foods stop serotonin from being made and the appetite from being turned off. There are only a few rules for using carbs as an anti-hunger food, which we describe in The Serotonin Power Diet: 1) Eat them an hour before a meal 2) Eat only about 120-130 calories of a fat-free, protein –free snack 3) If you nibble at night, eat a serotonin power-producing supper. That means no protein; just carbs and vegetables. 4) Keep your worms for fishing | permalink | related link | ( 3.1 / 90 )Recently I had a houseguest who is extremely computer literate. Full disclosure: she is my college- age granddaughter. After only a day, my computer contained more songs in a playlist than I will listen to in a lifetime, I learned how to use the video camera on Skype and how to send a Skype text message (she tested me on this several times). Finally, with her help, I was able to set up a Facebook site. A few days later, after she returned to her dorm, I was simultaneously talking to her on the phone, following her instructions on how to play those tunes on my playlist, reading a message she had sent me on Skype and checking out a Website that sold decorative items for dorm rooms. Fortunately, before my technology-overloaded brain could crash, she received another phone call and hung up. Afterward I wondered if all this typing and scanning and clicking and mouse moving might be beneficial for weight loss. How could one eat when all one’s fingers were occupied? In the old days, perhaps last year, weight loss organizations would give out lists of suggestions on what to do if you felt like eating but had run out of calories for the day. You were told to: take a walk (the time of night was irrelevant), soak in a bath (assuming you had a bath tub that had not been used to wash the dog) listen to music (if you could download your music on your iPod), read a magazine (if it is still being published), call a friend, or work on your scrapbook. The problem with all these suggestions is that it was certainly easy to eat while carrying them out. Well, eating in the bathtub was not too easy if the food was crumbly, but no other so-called distracting activities would really distract you from thinking of the left over pie in the refrigerator. But how can I possibly have eaten anything while carrying out all the activities involved in my recent phone- computer conversation with my granddaughter? I was so busy looking for icons to click or dragging my mouse to open or shut a window or trying to turn down the volume on the computer that was at an ear-blasting level (from her testing my play list) that eating would have been impossibility. And if any of you send text messages or watch others do so, you can see how difficult it is to use a fork or spoon when your thumbs are busy beating out urgent messages to your friends and family. In fact, one could see an extreme situation where our fingers are so attached to our keyboards that the only way we can obtain nourishment is through a straw. Is it possible that the answer to non-essential eating, i.e. snacking from habit, boredom, procrastination or frustration, is as close as our cell phone, computer keyboards, tweets and faceboard friendships? Of course, it is always possible to leave the computer or cell phone screen to grab a bag of chocolate chip cookies or a pint of ice cream. But if your computer or cell phone is calling out to you to return to the keyboard, you may have to either gobble the food or forget about it eating it entirely. Moreover, if you tend to use the video portion of Skype while talking to a friend, you may be less inclined to sit and talk and eat on camera than simply sit and talk. Unfortunately, the major limitation to this weight-loss approach is the sedentary nature of virtual interactions. Unlike the old sewing machines that required the seamstress to pump pedals to move the needle, we need move only our fingers, thumbs or the palm of our hands on a mouse to carry out our virtual conversations or interact with the virtual world of the Web. You can talk on a cell phone while exercising but there is no piece of gym equipment that lets you text on your cell phone or talk on Skype while you are working out. And the problem with talking on a cell phone while running or climbing on an elliptical trainer is that your panting and puffing makes you sound as if you are in a wind tunnel. Can we program our computers and cell phones, our Facebooks and Twitter sites to make us stop our fingers from moving and start moving our bodies? Would we be motivated to turn off the computer or cell phone if a message “ GO EXERCISE NOW” start to flash and beep? What if there were an authoritative voice emanating from the computer telling us to “Get up, get out and move”? Most of us have experienced the computer-generated voice that comes over a building public address system telling us to exit the building because of a fire emergency. Try as you might to ignore it because the last l00 times the voice came on, it was a false alarm, it is impossible to do so. Your feet find the staircase by the exit and the next thing you know you are on the street. Could a similarly compelling voice be programmed into our phones and computers that will push us to put on our sneakers and sweats and start to move? A sedentary lifestyle may show up as weight gain faster than your computer downloads a large program.So even though moving our fingers on the keyboard may prevent them from moving food into our mouths , weight loss will come about only if the rest of our body is moving as well. Go for a run, bike ride, take an exercise class, lift some weights, play some tennis. And then, when you come back sweaty, tired and well-exercised, you can talk about it on your facebook. | permalink | related link | ( 3 / 45 )I have a relative by marriage whom I see no more than every five or 10 years, usually at funerals and occasionally at weddings. A few weeks ago, I saw her, after a funeral, in the living room of a mutual relative. I was shocked at her appearance. Her formerly model-thin frame was hidden under what looked like many pounds of additional weight. She saw me and as we greeted each other, she started to cry. “ Look at me,” she said. “ I am a blob. I gained at least 55 pounds this year. I hate myself.” We sat down away from the ears of curious relatives and I listened to an all-too- familiar story. Melissa (not her real name) had always been naturally thin, much to the envy of her fatter or always dieting relatives (me, among others). About two years ago her mother died and her father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. An only child, she had to deal with her grief over her mother’s death and oversee her father’s care. She became anxious, depressed and had trouble sleeping. A psychiatrist put her on a combination of several drugs to help her problems and apparently never mentioned that she might gain weight as a result. There was a bowl of nuts on a table near our chairs. As we talked, she began eating them, one handful after another. Suddenly, horrified, she stopped and started to cry again. “ See what I am doing?” she wailed. “I don’t even notice that I am putting food in my mouth. But I can’t stop. My brain keeps telling me to eat, and it seems the only time I am not chewing something is when I am asleep. I hate the way I look, I can’t fit into my clothes but that’s okay because I am too ashamed of how I look to go out. I wish I could wear a sign that says: “ I am fat because of my medication.” I could see a few concerned relatives hovering nearby wondering why Melissa was crying and eating nuts at the same time. I suggested that we go for a walk so we could talk more privately. Once there was no one around to overhear our conversation I was able to learn what drugs she was taking. Her antidepressant was one of the more common ones and is known to cause at least a 15-pound weight gain and often considerably more. Her medication for anxiety, Zyprexa, has been associated with excessive weight gain and even diabetes as a consequence. “Should I stop taking the drugs?” she asked. “I can’t bear to gain anymore weight.” “Of course not,” I told her. “Whether you continue on the drugs or not depends on how you feel and whether your doctor thinks you should continue, not on what you weigh.” She started to cry again. “ That means I will never get thin. I’d rather be depressed and anxious and not sleep than look like this! People stare at me and I know they are talking about how fat I am. Just ask the relatives,” she said, pointing back at the house. ” I calmed her down and told her that sometimes relatives came in handy, as one of them, me, would be able to help her stop overeating and lose weight. It was getting cold outside so I gave her the 3-minute version of how drugs used to treat mood disorders somehow interfere with the ability of serotonin to control food intake. I understood her confusion as to how a drug making serotonin work harder at mood stabilization could somehow make this brain chemical less effective in its other role of controlling eating. “No one knows how the drugs increase appetite,” I explained. “But when I was running a weight-loss center at a psychiatric hospital several years ago, I found that increasing the production of serotonin in the brain stopped the overeating.” “Did they take a pill to do this?” she asked. “No,” I answered. “Pills containing serotonin are useless because serotonin can’t enter the brain from the blood stream. But fortunately all you have to do to make new serotonin is to eat carbohydrates like potatoes, pasta, rice, bread, cereal, crackers, popcorn, pretzels, and corn on the cob. When you eat any carbohydrate, except fruit, something called tryptophan gets into your brain and the brain uses it to make new serotonin.” “But won’t I get even fatter if I eat carbohydrates?” she complained. “Not if you eat carbohydrates without any added fat. And I am not talking about a whole box of cereal but just one cup. Let me send you a copy of my weight-loss book, The Serotonin Power Diet, and you will see what I am talking about.” As we started to go back inside, she asked, “ Tell me, how long will it take before the carbohydrates start to work to turn off my appetite?” “About 20 to 25 minutes after you eat a potato or small bag of pretzels,” I replied. “ You have to wait until the food is digested, which is one reason for avoiding carbohydrates that contain fat. But you will suddenly find yourself feeling satiated and not interested in eating. Look, you won’t lose all your weight in two weeks because you have a lot to lose. But you will gain control over your eating immediately and the weight loss will follow.” Once inside the house, she said, “ I am going to see if Aunt Bertha has some Cheerios. There’s no point in waiting any longer to get that serotonin going.” | permalink | related link | ( 2.9 / 59 )Back Next |
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