Well and Good : What happens when you stop exercising
Getting physically fit takes work
Monitoring Exercise Intensity
Using Perceived Exertion
A Walk A Day
Interval Training
Cross Training for Fun and Fitness
Exercise workouts
different for men and women
How Can I
Be Motivated to Lose Weight and Exercise?
Curative
Sleep
Twenty minutes of extra snoozing a night may prove a fat buster
Doctors at East Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, USA, studied
1,000 volunteers and found those who were of normal weight – having
a body mass index of less than 25 – on average slept for 16 minutes
more a day than those who were overweight or obese.
They say that hormonal
changes that increase appetite may result from insufficient sleep.
The researchers also
found that men tended to sleep for 27 minutes less every day than
women on average.
The findings of the
study are published in Archives of Internal Medicine.
In December, a
separate study found that those who slept for five hours a night had
higher levels of the hormone ghrelin, which stimulates appetite.
The Independent
13 January
© Global News Services Ltd
5 Success Essentials-Curative Sleep
Lack of Sleep Related to
Weight Gain
Breathing Exercises/Relaxation
Proper
Hydration
5 Success Essentials-Proper Hydration
The Importance of WATER to Human Health
Why we need water…
Other Reports and Articles
10
Tips on How To Avoid Weight Gain During Holidays
Integrity and Weight Loss
Excercise Spiritual Muscles
Iron-Deficiency Anemia
Migraine Headaches
Migraine Headaches-Herbal
Treatment
Seasonal Affective Disorder-S.A.D.
Change and Weight Loss
Self-Sabotage and Weight Loss
Weight Loss Plateau
PMS and Chocolate
The Whole-Person
Approach to Weight Loss
General
Tips on Weight Loss
Burnout and Emotional Exhaustion
Depression and Weight Loss
Losing Weight―Permanently:
Secrets of the 2% Who Succeed
Beating the Yo-Yo Effect
The Perfect Girl
Write Yourself Thin
Food and Feelings
Forgiveness and Disordered Eating
Principles of Forgiveness
Fad Diets-AHA
Recommendations
Fad Diets: Seduction and Deceit
Fad Diets: Limited Success
Want Weight Loss Success?
Metabolism
Exercise Your Trust Muscles
Articles on this page
The Fat Facts
Studies: Never too late to diet, exercise
Weight Loss Survival Skills
The Fat Facts
According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) in their
1999-2000 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHAMES)
"an estimated 64 percent of U.S. adults are either overweight (33
percent) or obese (31 percent)." "This report is alarming given that
obesity has been shown to promote many chronic diseases, including
type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, several types of cancer,
and gallbladder disease," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, CDC director. A
new study by RTI International and the CDC published in Obesity
Research, estimates that U.S. obesity-attributable medical expenses
reached $75 billion in 2003. Half of this is paid by taxpayers
through Medicare and Medicade.
Think about that! Being overweight or obese is extremely serious,
and possibly deadly. Let's look at some specifics, with help from
the Weight Control Information Network:
Diabetes - Eighty percent of people with type 2 diabetes are
overweight. It's thought that obesity puts a strain on cells, making
them less able to handle sugar in the bloodstream.
Heart disease - Being overweight puts a strain on the heart and
circulatory system, causing them to not work right. This can lead to
chest pains, abnormal heart rhythms, stroke, sudden cardiac failure,
or death.
High Blood Pressure - Overweight people are more likely to have
this, as well as cholesterol problems (high levels of LDL, the "bad"
cholesterol, low levels of HDH, the "good" one).
Cancer - is linked to being overweight, including cancer of the
colon, esophagus, kidney, and uterine, and postmenopausal breast
cancer have all been linked to excess weight.
Osteoarthritis - Being overweight places excess load on joints,
cartilage, and bones, causing them to wear-down. Also, there is
research suggesting that excess body fat may cause inflammation,
raising the risk of osteoarthritis.
In other words, being overweight can have dangerous consequences for
your health and therefore should be taken very seriously. The good
news is that you can do something about it. Just losing 10 pounds
will help.
Quoted from: Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health
Studies: Never too late to diet, exercise
By Rob Stein
The Washington Post
Reprinted in The Seattle Times Sept 22, 2004, page A4
(Comment-if diet and exercise can help those in their 70's-90's, how
much more can it help those who follow these principles while still
young)
It is never too late to eat well and exercise every
day, according to four new studies that found healthy lifestyles can
produce dramatic benefits for the body and mind even among the
elderly.
Although much research has demonstrated that a good
diet and regular physical activity are potent promoters of health,
the four studies released yesterday found that the effects extend
into old age, sharply reducing the risk not only of heart disease
and cancer, but even of dementia.
"A lot of times older people get the idea that,
"What's done is done. It's too late for me now," said Meir
Stampfer of the Harvard School of Public Health, who co-authored an
editorial accompanying the research in today's Journal of the
American Medical Association. "This says, "It's not too late
to have a big influence.'"
One of the studies found that elderly people who ate
a healthful diet, exercised regularly, drank alcohol moderately and
avoided smoking slashed by more than half their risk of dying from
any cause, while another found that the same diet improved
blood-vessel function and reduced inflammation. The two other
studies produced the strongest evidence yet that simply walking
everyday goes a long way toward keeping the mind sharp and warding
off dementia, including Alzheimer's disease.
Taken together, the new studies provide some of the
most definitive evidence to date that relatively simple, inexpensive
lifestyle changes can dramatically improve the health and well-being
of the elderly, experts said.
"This package really provides a lot more data
supporting the whole concept that lifestyle matters," Stampfer said
in a telephone interview.
The findings are particularly important because of
the rapidly increasing number of Americans who are elderly, a
driving force behind skyrocketing health-care costs in the United
States.
"The most important message for the public is, the
combination of all these factors can have an enormous impact," said
Perry Hu, a geriatric medicine expert at the UCLA School of
Medicine. "It's really the combination of factors that will
benefit older adults the most."
In the first study, the most comprehensive attempt to
date to assess the health effects of various lifestyle factors among
the elderly, researchers followed 1,507 healthy men and 832 healthy
women ages 70 to 90 in 11 European countries for 10 years.
Those who led the most healthy lifestyles were more
than 50 percent less likely to die from any cause. A healthy
lifestyle consisted of a so-called Mediterranean diet, which is rich
in grains, olive oil, vegetables, fruits and fish and low in meat
and dairy products. It also included about 30 minutes of
moderate activity a day, such as walking; consuming about two or
three alcoholic drinks a day; and not smoking.
Each of those lifestyle choices alone had a dramatic
effect on health, individually reducing by more than on-fifth to
more than one-third the risk of dying from any cause, the
researchers found. Overall, 60 percent of all deaths, 64
percent of deaths from heart disease, 61 percent of deaths from
cardiovascular disease and 60 percent of deaths from cancer5 were
associated with failing to live that kind of life, the study found.
"This says, "Even if you are older, you have to pay
attention to your diet and look at your alcohol consumption,
physical activity and smoking,' " said Kim Knoops of the Wageningen
University in the Netherlands, who led the study. "It can have
a big impact on your health and longevity."
The Mediterranean-diet study found that it improved
blood-vessel function and reduced inflammation in people suffering
from an increasingly common condition known as the metabolic
syndrome, which boosts the risk for heart disease and diabetes.
The two remaining studies are the first to follow
large numbers of older men and women over time to determine whether
the amount of physical activity they did, including walking,
affected the health of their minds.
In the first, researchers followed 16,466 women
participating in the Nurses' Health Study, an ongoing project that
has produced a number of landmark findings. The women were in
their 70s and early 80s, those who reported the most physical
activity, including walking, scored significantly higher on tests
measuring learning, memory and attention than those who reported the
least, and the more active they were the better their cognitive
functioning, the researchers found.
Our data do support the contention that being active
does protect your brain," said Jennifer Weve of the Harvard School
of Public Health, who led the study.
In the second, researchers followed 2,257 men ages 71
to 93 participating in the Honolulu-Asia Aging study form 1991 to
1999, specially examining the relationship between daily walking and
the risk for dementia. Those who walked the least - less than
a quarter-mile a day - were about twice as likely to develop
dementia, including Alzheimer's disease, as those who walked more
than two miles a day, the researchers found.
Although neither study examined how physical activity
might protect mental function, other research suggests it may
improve blood flow to the brain or perhaps promote brain-cell growth
and connections between neurons.
Weight Loss Survival Skills
Article by Jennifer R. Scott, of About.com
Australian outback, schmoutback. If you're talking
about a true survival challenge, you're talking about weight loss.
The tests: Surviving going to a buffet and choosing the salad bar
instead. Choosing to exercise during the one hour you have to
yourself. Staying motivated when you hit a plateau…. now there's a
challenge!
I'd like to share my core weight loss survival
skills with you this week. I feel these are small changes that are
crucial to my success, and I am sure they will continue to be
necessary when I enter maintenance.
1. Downing diet soda. I am a guzzler. The
waitresses at my favorite restaurants probably hate to see me
coming because I take the concept of "free refills" to the
extreme. It is not unusual for me to gulp down three or four
glasses of soda at one sitting. Once I decided to add up
how many calories those sodas amounted to. Can you believe I was
drinking more than 2000 calories a day just in soda? After years
of swearing that I would never drink diet sodas, I switched. I
couldn't stand diet sodas at first, but the more I drank them, I
got used to them, and now I actually prefer some diet sodas to
their high-calorie counterparts.
(Thin for Life strongly recommends the use of water, not diet
soda)
2. Exercising when I don't want to. Sometimes I
can list a dozen things I could be doing instead of exercising.
It's hard not to give in. "Well, I really do need to reorganize
my closet. I could get ready so much more quickly in the
mornings if everything was grouped together by colors." The only
thing that gets me to exercise when I don't want to is to think
about how I will feel afterwards, knowing deep down that I have
done something that is far more beneficial than color-coding my
closet.
3. There are also two other tricks I use to
"force" myself to exercise. One is to focus on the benefits
besides weight maintenance. For example, when I walk on my lunch
break, I remind myself that it's to get fresh air after being
stuck in the office for four hours and to get moving after being
seated in front of my computer for a half a day. I know that
it's good for my mental health and emotional well-being to get
that break and fresh and air, and the brisk walk keeps me from
getting the afternoon dullsville syndrome.
4. Another way I get myself to just do it is to
go ahead and change into my exercise clothes, even if I think I
don't feel like exercising. Most of the time, I'll go ahead and
break a sweat since I'm dressed for the occasion. Granted,
sometimes it doesn't work; once in a blue moon I'll end up doing
nothing but watching TV. Subconsciously, I think I believe that
channel surfing can be considered an aerobic activity if I do it
wearing spandex! But nine times out of 10, I feel obligated to
finish what I started and I hop on the treadmill or pop in that
exercise video.
5. Pack up a portion. I read this tip years ago
in Prevention magazine and I recently started putting it to use
religiously. We all know how massive portion sizes have become
in restaurants. Cut your fat and calories in half by dividing
your meal into half as soon it is brought to your table and put
it in a container to take home. It cuts down on how much you are
consuming in one sitting, and provides you with a meal to heat
up for lunch the next day.
Eating Disorders
To read a variety of reports regarding Eating Disorders go
to The Center for Counseling & Health Resources, Inc. Eating Disorder
Section.
Healthy Eating
Physical Movement
