Fitness Tip for Week ending February 9, 2013.

Ok Folks, sorry this one is a little late,   been hectic around here.

Diet/Weight Watchers
The simple fact of the matter is that if you are really looking for substantial weight loss and have it be sustained over the long haul, this isn't a "diet" but a life style change.  You have to change your eating habits Permanently!  One of the things you will have to do is give up eating some things on a regular basis.  And yes there will be a list.  Mine list is long, but includes things like pizza, mac-n-cheese, macaroni salad, potato chips,,,, and it goes on.  Yes, occasionally (like once a month or two) you can have these, but they need to leave not just the daily diet, but the weekly also, (if not the monthly).  So when you are making this list, find one or two foods that you really like and figure out how to fit them into your diet.

My 2 are beer and chocolate.  I fit them in this way.  With beer, I like all kinds, dark beers, pilsners, ambers, stouts, IPAs, every last one of them.  So once a week I allow myself one mug of beer at my favorite brewery.  Now a mug is 20 oz, and that figures to be 7 WW Points, so I drink one.  This is where my wife helps, she reminds me, just one.  If we go somewhere else I am remain very conscious of the qty/points ratio.   If I run into a plateau (like right now) beer gets removed completely.

For chocolate, we buy really really good dark chocolate, and have it as a treat most nights, 1 oz or less.  But it is worth it, and it is only a 3-4 points.

Treat yourself, but plan your treats, make it part of your plan.  And through the rest out! You won't miss them.

Exercise & Fitness
There has been a lot written about what type of exercise you should do to lose weight.  Here is my experience.  When I started out I needed an exercise to make me work, break a sweat and start improving my cardio vascular system.  That mean't cardio, increasing the number of calories I was burning was first and foremost.  I liked walking, but my knees and feet were under too much stress at my starting weight.  So I got out my mountain bike.  Less joint stress, no foot pain.  I could work up a good sweat, and my endurance started to go up.

Cycling turned into Spinning classes in the winter, and then in the spring it went to a whole new level.  I bought a road bike and it got serious, rides over 4 hours and over 50 miles.  But the bottom line was these big time cardio workouts were transforming my whole cardio vascular system.  My weight went down, as did my blood pressure.  Endurance has gone through the roof.  This fall, after the cycling season I I went back to spinning and started adding a lot of strength training.  Increasing muscle mass now helps fuel my metabolism.

I truly believe this is the correct order.  You have to get your weight down by burning lots of calories, and increase your stamina and endurance before you can reap the full benefits of strength training.  My weight workouts now are killer.  But without the cardio to get me to this point they would have never happened.

Find that exercise that you like, that you can really push yourself with. Walking, cycling, running, rowing, Zumba, etc. This burns big time BTU's.  If you are doing WW, try and increase your activity points 5-10 points each week until you get them up over 75/week.  Now your burning some real calories!

Then as your endurance goes up and weight down, start to add the strength training in.  It will make your cardio better, make you less prone to injury and increase your metabolism.  When you get to that point where it is all in balance, diet, cardio and strength training, you are going wonder why you didn't do it long ago!

Keep working!  - Microe