I was thinking about how messages in the media affect our ability to maintain or loose weight, get in shape and eat right. Virtually all ads, regardless of the product they’re pitching, paraphrase “as part of a balanced diet and regular exercise” in the fine print. For the highly motivated, that may be enough to get going and keep up. For others, they ignore the part that involves hard work and go straight for the quick fix. My thoughts turned more and more to finding indirect ways to accomplish fitness and weight loss goals and the small habits that can be changed relatively easily. I mean, I work out an hour every day. I made a big lifestyle change to accomplish that task. But what else can you do? My advice: Change some “little” habits. Like these:

• If you’re going up less than 5 floors in a building, take the stairs. You’ll get there in about the same amount of time considering you usually have to wait for the elevator.
• Make your lunch and/or dinner and take snacks with you from home. Take 1 main meal and 2 snacks. You’ll be less tempted to eat all of the too-large portions you get from dining in your cafeteria or local restaurant.
• Eat food that is as close to its natural state as possible. Eat a banana instead of chips. Eat fresh cooked chicken instead of frozen dinners. Avoid highly processed foods as much as possible. There are things in there that would turn your stomach. But that’s another post.
• Eat. Don’t starve yourself. The rule of thumb that I follow is this: To loose weight, eat 25% fewer calories than normal. To gain muscle, eat about 25% more. Of course, follow the advice above for best results. And follow the advice below to get a true measure of what you’re actually eating.
• Be honest about your caloric intake. Until I got absolutely in-my-face honest about what I was ingesting, I always significantly under-estimated how many calories I was actually consuming. I’d easily forget the latte in the afternoon or the beer after work. If you have to, count every single calorie you eat and drink for 1 week.
• Sleep. Getting a good night’s sleep makes more difference than you might think. Your body is very efficient at repairing itself and it does this work best at night while you’re asleep.
• Listen to music while you work out. And stop reading books or magazines on the treadmill! This is a favorite of mine. Reading makes you slow down. I mean, it’s hard to read on the stair-stepper. Listening to music helps you increase the intensity of your workout because it’s easier to concentrate on your movement and keep pace.
• Replace juices and sodas with water. All sodas are bad - I’m not afraid to make that generalization. Not all juices are bad but many contain high amounts of added sugars. Efficient cells are ones that are properly hydrated and they’re less prone to disease and abnormalities.
• Eliminate desserts from your daily meals. This was a tough one for me. My rationale was “I work out so I can have a nice piece of cake after dinner.” Eventually, I changed that to, “I’ll have a piece of cake on a special occasion but never after a normal meal.” Fruit became my daily desserts.
• Shop more frequently. This one wasn’t obvious to me at first. Until I realized that I was eating the worst stuff after the good stuff was spoiled or gone. Now I try to shop twice a week for fruits and vegetables and once a week for meats. I’m less likely to eat junk if I have fresh food in the fridge that I know will go bad if I don’t eat it.

These are but a few of the myriad of things you can do. They’ve worked for me. I don’t think I could ever quantify the results I get from these new “habits” but I know they’re helping in some small way. I also know that even though they’re small, they’re not insignificant.

One of the things I’ve noticed about people’s eating habits is what kinds of liquids we consume.  Of the research that I’ve done, it would appear that we “drink” an average of about 20% of our total caloric intake for the day.  So on a 2000 calorie diet, we drink about 400 of them.  Now it would be extreme to suggest that one should completely replace all liquids with plain water.  No one wants to do that.  I mean, we enjoy our lattes, energy drinks, sodas and juices.  I recognized this in myself a year or so ago.  I’ve never been a soda drinker so that wasn’t hard to cut out.  But I was drinking a latte or two almost every day.  I was having processed juices that contained copious amounts of refined sugars.

Another thing I noticed was how people, including myself, would eat when they were really thirsty.  Usually, I found that I would eat something that had a high water content like pudding.  When we eat, we do get a fair amount of liquid since all food has some water content.  Except maybe rice cakes!  It got me wondering why that happens.  Why, if I’m thirsty, don’t I just go for a nice tall glass of water?  Why would I eat when I have thirst?

For me, recognizing this was a major revelation and once I was alerted to the habit, I was able to change it.  It was difficult at first because my conditioning lead me straight to the pantry for some snack food.  I had to catch myself in the act and make the conscious effort to redirect myself to the sink instead.  Turns out that a glass of water satisfied me even though my brain was trying to make me believe it wouldn’t.

Obviously it would be gastronomically boring if I substituted all my liquids for water every day.  There are many creative ways to dress up your water - a slice of lime or one of those flavored powder packets.  And I take some enjoyment in a grande decaf skinny almond latte from time to time.  But that’s what it’s become now - a treat instead of a way to quench a physiological condition with a poor choice.  And if I really do feel like I want to eat to satisfy my thirst, I head for an orange or banana, both of which have a lot of water.  Instead of a latte, I’ll have tea with a little bit of raw honey.

So, two very simple ways to cut calories:

1. Don’t mistake thirst for hunger.
2. Don’t use fancy drinks to satisfy thirst.

One pleasant side effect I’ve seen with this change of habit is the amount of money I’ve saved.  I now spend only about 10% of what I used to spend on fancy drinks and thirst food.  So dump the sugar-laden colas, the hyped-up energy drinks, cut down on fancy coffees and don’t reach for a piece of apple cobbler when you need a drink.  Mmmm, apple cobbler is good m’kay?  Something to look forward to when it’s more prudent.

This video is exactly why most exercise programs fail. I can’t believe that the developers and marketers of this product actually thought this was a good idea or in some remote way beneficial. To lose weight and add muscle, YOU have to do the work, NOT the chair! C’mon, don’t listen to people who say that getting fit and loosing weight is easy. IT IS NOT EASY! Sorry to shout like that but it’s true. It is hard work.

Today, I had pretty much the same meal as yesterday so I won’t go into those details. I worked out the lower body today with a 15 minute cardio warmup. I increased my weight resistance by 5 pounds on all my exercises and still tried to complete the same 3 sets of 10 reps. My legs were burning. Tonight, I had the opportunity to play some racquetball for an hour after work as well. Kicked butt by the way!

Anyway, enjoy this video. These people look stupid on these silly chairs. Don’t buy one. Please.