The One True Secret of Success

Many of us have a favorite columnist or writer that we really enjoy reading; someone who’s words leave an impression on us, inspire us, and with whom our ideas, values and/or philosophy resonate-we look forward to “hearing” from them.  For me, Alexander Green is one of those writers.  Frequent readers of Throwing a Fit will recognize the name as I’ve featured Mr. Green’s work before.  This particular piece hit home for obvious reasons (you’ll see.)  I hope you enjoy it as much I did.  If so, leave me a message in the comments section and let me know!

The One True Secret of Success -by Alexander Green

Each year for the past 14 years, I made a weight goal as a New Year's resolution. The same one, in fact. With each passing year, however, I only drifted a little farther from it.

Yet something happened over the last 90 days. I went on a plant-based diet, ran and lifted weights nearly every day, lost 20 pounds, and got in the best shape I've been in in decades. According to Professor Roberta Anding, a registered dietician and Director of Sports Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, I am now at my ideal weight.

The next challenge, of course, is maintaining it. But I really don't think I'll relapse. I've discovered that fit feels better than anything tastes. 

What Are You Having for Breakfast?

You’ve heard it time and time again, “breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” With the advent of intermittent fasting and other novel dietary approaches, the phrase is no longer a given.  But it’s hard to tell the gimmicks from the latest scientific research when it comes to fat loss, nutrition and optimal health.  The confusion, begins at breakfast. 

 

Breakfast is either loved or hated. It’s often hated because on busy mornings, before work or school, it takes time to prepare a healthy breakfast, time most of us just don’t have.  In addition, many people find it difficult to eat breakfast because we don’t have much of an appetite first thing in the morning. We’ll grab a coffee and a piece of toast perhaps, and rush out the door; carbs in hand…or, stomach. But it gets worse.

Lessons I Learned From Mom About Health

Eat your vegetables:  It doesn’t get more basic than that; I knew she was right; and Mom loved vegetables-but I hated them.  I learned to "adapt" to vegetables by disguising them.  When in doubt, you can always melt cheese over anything.  But beware, this could get you fat in a hurry. Replace the cheese with a little butter and added nuts, crispy onions, garlic, spices, dried fruit or sesame seeds.  Or, you can try pureeing (mostly spinach, carrots and cauliflower.)  You may eventually got brave enough to eat some steamed broccoli. Once I learned that one of my favorite foods, salad, is a vegetable, it was cause for celebration.  

These days, I make a delicious chocolate whey protein shake for breakfast every morning to which I add a big leaf of kale...and I can barely taste it (really!)

What Stress Can Do to You

There was once a quote (which I can’t seem to find in its exactitude) that said something to the effect of “If you're fighting an enemy that you just can't seem to hit, you may have to settle for the death of a thousand cuts." So you can die just as easily from a thousand little cuts as you can from one deep cut. 

So it is with stress.  Need I remind you of the phrase “stress kills?”  When this catch phrase first came out, it conjured up thoughts of some type of evil and pervasive force know as “stress” or an emotionally overwhelming event that not even the most hardened survivor could withstand. 

Now, when we think “stress kills” we associate it with more of a low-grade constant than an extreme event-like an irritating family member that is constantly at your side, needling you until you can’t take it another second and you want to rip their head off. 

The human fight or flight mechanism was meant to send a surge of energy in the form of sugar and hormone release to help us fend off serious danger.

Spring Cleaning-Yourself

They all say it.  All the gurus, the self-helpers, the personal developers-take charge of your life!  they cry.  It’s all up to you! Seize the day!  Its good advice; and I happen to agree with it.  But where to start?  If your idea of spring cleaning is to open the closet doors and take a quick leap backward to avoid the ensuing avalanche-then go back and dig in, you’ll have a cleaner house in short order.  But what about a cleaner you?  Shouldn’t your body be up for some spring cleaning of its own?  You change the oil filter and air filter on your car, what about the filtering system in your body-your liver and kidneys? They also need cleaning.  You can’t just take a few fiber supplements, wait until they kick in, then consider yourself “cleaned out,” like having just prepped for a colonoscopy-that won’t do it.  This is why you should consider “doing” a detox; to get clean-from the inside out.

5 Tips to Enjoy a Guilt-Free Easter or Passover

It’s April now and the food-related horror that was the holidays is but a distant memory.  Or is it?  My friend Lynn and I were talking about current fitness “hot topics” today and we decided that as there are so many relevant and important things to talk about, we should to narrow it down a bit. That’s when Lynn said “what about the holidays?”  “What about them? I asked, they’re nine months away.” “Not those holidays, the one this weekend!” she said.  “What can we do to minimize the damage so to speak?”  Here are five things that help:

·        Realize it’s just one day-or two, or three.  If you over-indulge, don’t throw in the towel and then say “aw, it doesn’t matter, I ruined everything

The Basics...2012 Style-Part II

As I mentioned in part I, a mountain of studies have been written in recent years to support burst training as a superior form of cardiovascular training but it has yet to become the mainstream form of cardiovascular exercise.  Why? One reason is that old habits die hard-very hard.

Speaking of hard…burst training is tough! Ah, but it’s so much shorter and that has one very important benefit:

 

The number one reason why people say they don’t exercise is that they don’t have time.  Burst training puts an end to that excuse. The recommended five to eight bursts will take about twenty minutes to complete and everyone can find twenty minutes especially if they don’t have to be consecutive minutes-and they don’t.  Another reason this hasn’t caught on as quickly as it should have is because of the large, commercial or big box gyms.  The typical big box Gym is