Tag Archive for: exercise

Exercise Your Heart, Part 1

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In my opinion, the single most important thing you can do to be able to live life at your best is to exercise your heart. Every day. You don’t have to run marathons; you don’t ever need to run at all. You just need to train your heart every day. I’ve broken it down into two components that I’ll call baseline and reserve.

The aerobic baseline for your heart is just that: the level of fitness you need to accomplish every day tasks. The baseline will be different based on your age, your initial fitness level, and what your everyday activities are. That’s as simple as walking across a room and as challenging as being a laborer on a construction site or moving furniture up five flights of stairs.

If there are no orthopedic issues, the simplest exercise is walking or it could be long-distance running or bike riding. The goal is to get your heart rate elevated enough to cause the heart to beat faster than it does when resting. That trains the heart in more ways than I can explain.

The simplest way to describe how to do it’s this way. Walk fast enough so that you have to take a deep breath once in a while but you can carry on a conversation. If you can’t talk, slow it down. But if you can sing, that’s too slow. You can use that across every aerobic type of exercise from aerobics to Zumba. The goal is at least 30 minutes most days of the week.

You also need a reserve and I’ll talk about that on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Is the 10,000-Steps Goal a Myth?

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One of the things many people do for fitness is try to get 10,000 steps per day. Researchers recently wanted to know whether that many steps really gives a person any health advantage, because the concept of 10,000 steps per day wasn’t based on any real science—it came from a Japanese company who invented a wearable step counter in 1965 and just made up a number that sounds good.

Researchers analyzed data from 16,741 older women who agreed to wear a step counter at least 10 hours per day for at least four days a week during waking hours. They divided the subjects into quartiles based on the number of steps per day. After four years of follow-up, they discovered that hazard ratios declined as the number of steps per day increased. No real surprise there. What was surprising was that there were no additional benefits after 7,500 steps per day; in fact, the mortality began to decline with as little as 4,400 steps per day.

Is the goal of 10,000 steps per day a myth? Not in my opinion; most of us are too sedentary most of the time. The mean age of the subjects in this study was 72. It may be that younger women need more steps to impact mortality because they have potentially more years to live; then maybe after reaching 72, they can scale back. Hard to say. But they looked at mortality only; 10,000 steps per day may have benefits they didn’t examine.

I would have thought walking intensity might have had an impact, but it didn’t in this study. However, another recently published study may provide more insight, especially as it relates to obesity. We’ll take a look on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: JAMA Intern Med. 2019. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.0899.

What Counts: Exercise or Movement?

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This week is planting week around the house, so Paula and I will be working around the yard each day. What we won’t do is go to the gym to work out. In thinking about it, that raises the issue of the myth of physical activity: does yardwork count or do you have to get your heart rate to a certain amount?

The answer is it all counts. In fact, if your lifestyle forces you to move a couple of times an hour, all day long, that’s associated with living longer. We’ve lost the equivalent of 700 calories of daily activity due to technological advances in the past century; those are calories that contribute to the weight gain that’s been creeping up on us. We could cut 700 calories from our daily diet or we can find ways to use another 700 calories every day. Anything and everything you can do to use calories throughout the day counts. Gardening and yardwork definitely count in that process, and as the image shows, it’s movement you can pass on to future generations.

We’ll look at a food myth on Thursday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Fast Isn’t Just His Speed

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There’s one more lesson we learned about how the staff helps keep the birds of prey from getting fat: one day a week, the birds fast. They simply don’t feed them anything other than what may make a mistake and crawl into their cages—which are the size of a living room.

Fasting. What a concept! It’s a gimmick that’s being taught a variety of ways in weight loss programs and books. Maybe to trick the metabolism. Maybe to stay in ketosis. Baloney.

Fasting reflects what happens to the birds of prey when they live in the wild. There are days when they don’t catch anything, or they don’t find carrion. On those days, they don’t eat.

That used to happen to us as well when we didn’t catch animals or the crops failed. When all you have to do is drive to the supermarket or the drive-thru and buy whatever you want to eat, forced hunger doesn’t happen any more. We have to decide to do it. It’s no gimmick; it mimics real life.

I hope this look at what we learned at the Center for Birds of Prey was informative. There’s a lot more I covered in this month’s Conference Call; you can still listen by becoming an Insider. Check it out.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Do Birds of Prey Count Calories?

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One of the things about bird of prey that surprised me was how light birds such as eagles and vultures really are; that’s a turkey vulture above. While the weight can vary depending on the origin of the eagles, they weigh 6–10 pounds. With a wingspan of 6–7 feet, they seem imposing, but in reality they’re mostly feathers and feathers really don’t weigh all that much.

The birds are weighed regularly, and their diet is adjusted to prevent weight gain. The staff portions how much they eat by the number of calories the food contains. In other words, the staff counts calories for the birds. Let me repeat that: they control the birds’ weight by counting calories.

Calorie counting works for birds of prey and it works for humans as well. In The Weight Loss Cycle CD of the Optimal Performance Program, I cover all the research that proves why that’s true. I know what you read and hear elsewhere, but I’m here to tell you that counting calories keeps these magnificent creatures at their target weight. It will work for you, too.

One more lesson from the birds of prey, and I think it will surprise you. That’s coming on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

What Can We Learn from Birds of Prey?

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When Paula and I spent last week visiting our son and daughter-in-law in Summerville, South Carolina, one of the things we did was visit the Center for Birds of Prey, and it was a tremendous experience. We saw bald eagles, turkey vultures, horned owls, storks, and many more, including a truly amazing flying demo with a hawk, an owl, a kite, and a vulture. The birds on permanent display have been injured and wouldn’t survive if returned to the wild. I could spend all week on a single bird and still not cover all we learned. To find out more, check out their website www.thecenterforbirdsofprey.org, and if you’re near Charleston, plan to visit. They do wonderful work rescuing birds of prey and nursing them back to health as well as breeding birds for other educational programs or to help save a species.

Paula asked a great question during the flight demonstration: do the birds in captivity get fat? The answer forms the basis for this week’s Memos. The answer is yes, of course. When a bird must fly for hours to find and catch food, it uses a lot of calories. If the birds can’t fly, they die in the wild. When the birds are in captivity, they can’t burn enough calories so if they eat as much as they want, they get fat.

Lesson? If you’re not moving regularly and every day, it’s really hard to control your weight. More on Thursday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Move Up to Interval Training

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Recently I watched an interview with the cast and production staff of the third John Wick movie, which will be released soon. What struck me was the physical preparation to do the action and fight scenes. When the third installment of the movie was announced, Keanu Reeves shouted to himself. “All right. It’s time for John Wick Training!” He worked more than six months for six to eight hours per day on physical training specific to the fights and action scenes that were going to be in the movie, and he uses stunt doubles very rarely—it’s all up on the screen. Halle Berry, who’s new to the series, jumped at the chance to do that training as well. I can’t wait.

You and I don’t have the hours in the day to do that type of training, but we can do better than we are right now. Interval training seems to have become a mainstay of fitness recommendations. I’ve used it for years to increase my fitness level. It’s stressful because the effort is so hard, but you can adjust the effort to where you are today.

Check out the Health Info titled Interval Training. It explains the concept and how to construct your own interval program. If you want to take it one step up in intensity, check out the Spartan Workout that combines strength with endurance interval training.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

How to Bust a Plateau

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It happens to everyone when we lose weight: the scale stops moving downward even though we’re doing everything the same as we’ve been doing. How do we start losing again?

Patience. While the scale may not move, there’s a lot going on. Hundreds of changes are happening in just about every cell of your body as it adapts to your new eating and exercise regime. Those changes take time to happen, and you just have to ride it out. Don’t reduce your calories any more than you have. Reach for patience; remind yourself that great changes are happening even if you can’t see them on the scale.

However there are a couple of ways that exercise may help you start losing weight again. The keys are: do you have the additional time? And are you fit enough to do them? You probably need to talk to your doctor to know. To learn more, check out the Health Info paper titled Busting Weight Loss Plateaus.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Exercise Intuitively

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The age of Jane Austen’s England was much different from the current age; going for a two-hour walk seems almost a fantasy in today’s world. Being figuratively chained to a desk or some manner of work that doesn’t provide freedom of movement seems to be the norm. When it’s time to walk, we must accomplish the most in the shortest time available. Our schedules simply don’t provide the freedom to do more.

Or do we just not look for opportunities in our day where can stretch at our desks, go outside and take a series of deep breaths, take the stairs instead of the elevator? We tend to categorize what we do in specific ways: “This is the time to exercise and we have xx minutes to get it done.” Has it helped our society much? How fit is the average American?

Based on Kozlowski’s background for his books, he found that the average person in that time could typically walk seven miles at a stretch. They did not seem to count steps and they rested when they felt like it. In Pride and Prejudice, Lizzie Bennet seems to spend the afternoons tramping around outside whenever possible. (And for the record, Paula is a long-time aficionado of Jane Austen and insists the 1995 BBC version is the definitive Pride and Prejudice for its casting, costumes, and success in capturing the spirit of the original book.)

All that walking wasn’t what we call exercise today, but it was effective. Maybe it’s our attitude toward exercise that needs adjusting. Where can you find opportunities to move in your day?

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: https://wapo.st/2UeaSiZ

Drop and Give Me 41

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The study on firefighters, push-ups, and CVD was interesting—not only for the relationship between push-ups and CVD, but also for the other relationships between the number of push-ups and other variables. Here’s a summary:

As the number of push-ups increased:

  • Body mass index decreased
  • Systolic and diastolic blood pressure decreased
  • Blood sugar decreased
  • Total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, and triglycerides decreased
  • HDL-cholesterol increased

One more thing: age decreased as well. In other words, the men in the study who could do more push-ups were younger. Was that the real reason—they were younger so naturally they could do more push-ups? They accounted for age in the statistical analysis, so it doesn’t appear to be so.

Does this study show cause and effect? No, because it’s observational. What it shows is that the lifestyle of the subject is important in the development of CVD. The subjects who had the greatest reduced risk had the highest aerobic and strength fitness, which may be reflective of an overall healthy lifestyle. Because push-ups require no equipment, progress can be easily tracked in a physician’s office. That was the actual point of the study: a simple test that could be predictive of CVD among other factors.

Here’s my challenge to you. After you see how many you do as a baseline, work at doing push-ups every day until you can hit 41. If you can’t do one, start with knee push-ups, push-ups from an exercise ball or chair, or wall push-ups (stand more than an arm’s length from the wall). As you can get to 41 one way, move to the next more difficult type.

When you get to 41, send me an email saying you did it and I’ll send you a coupon code good for 30% off the Optimal Performance Program; Member and Insider discounts apply. I’ll take you at your word, no selfies and no videos. After all, the only person you would be cheating is yourself and your risk of heart disease. I know age doesn’t matter; one of my readers in his 80s can already do this challenge. All it takes is a little sweat equity. Check with your doctor and get started.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.8341.