May 2012 – Keep it Small
People eat more when they’re offered larger servings. This may not come as a surprise to you, but just to prove the point, Belgian researchers offered 88 college students one of three bowls of M&Ms to snack on as they watched a 22 minute TV show: a small, 1 cup bowl containing 200 grams of candy; a large, 3 cup bowl containing 200 grams of candy; and, a large, 3 cup bowl containing 600 grams of candy. The students ate twice as much candy from the two large bowls (about 60 grams, or 300 calories worth) than they did from the small bowl (about 30 grams, or 150 calories worth).
The moral of the story…if your dishes are on the large size, and you are trying to eat less, maybe it’s worth investing in a new set. And keep in mind that you will likely eat more of the remaining chips or cookies or crackers at the bottom of a large bag than you might from a smaller bag. So, it helps to re-package food from large bags into smaller containers. And if you don’t want to eat the entire dish at a restaurant, share it with a friend, or have the waiter wrap half of it up for you to take home before it reaches the table.
Ref: Nutrition Action Health Letter May 2012
April 2012 – Sleep more, eat less
Sleep is sort of like broccoli: everyone knows they should get more of it, but it often gets displaced by other things. So here’s a result that might encourage you to get more sleep. Swedish researchers performed brain scans on a group of volunteers after a sleepless night. When they were shown pictures of food in the morning, the area of the brain associated with reward behaviour kicked into overdrive. What does this tell us? Less sleep makes food seem more rewarding.
This isn’t the first study to make this link. Earlier studies have shown that getting even a few hours less sleep than you need raises levels of ghrelin (the hormone that signals it’s time to start eating) and suppresses levels of leptin (the hormone that tells you when you are full and can stop eating). What’s the take-away message? Aim for 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night, especially if you are trying to improve your eating habits or loose weight.
Ref: “Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights? Fitness Myths, training Truths and Other Surprising Discoveries from the Science of Exercise” by Alex Hutchinson
March 2012 – Is Sitting Disease Killing you?
Sitting still at the extent we do today has a documented negative effect on everything from back pain to taking us to an early grave. The more we sit, the worse our health gets. Diabetes, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, waist measurement, BMI, Cardio vascular disease, the list is long of the complications caused by the so-called sitting disease.
In a study of 123,000 people presented at the annual conference of the American Institute for Cancer Research, researchers found that the more time people spent sitting, the higher their risk of dying early. “Even among individuals who were regularly active, the risk of dying prematurely was higher among those who spent more time sitting”.
There are lots of things that you can do to offset the debilitating effects of too much sitting. Here are some easy to do ideas that you can do anywhere, anytime. And note that Standing uses more muscles and burns more calories than sitting. So, train yourself to:
At work:
• Stand whenever you talk on the telephone.
• Pace during staff meetings, if your boss will allow it.
• Ask friends to go for a walk during lunch instead of chatting in the break room.
• Use the stairs instead of the elevator.
• Start having walk-and-talk meetings with your co-workers, rather than conference room meetings.
• Move trash cans out of cubicles to make people walk to throw out garbage.
• Use the washroom on a different floor from your office.
• Relocate water coolers by windows, where people will want to congregate.
• Telecommute from a park on a sunny day
• Walk around outside while participating in a conference call.
• Take a brisk, 15-minute walk in the afternoon, you’ll be far more productive in your last two hours. If you’re worried that you don’t have time for a walk, you may be surprised.
• Take a bus or train to work, you can stand, clench, and relax your muscles or get off a stop early and walk several blocks.
• If mass transit isn’t an option, find a distant parking spot so you walk for a few minutes before and after work.
Before or after work:
• The furthest parking space isn’t all bad – if you end up on the furthest side of the car park, or even a couple of blocks away, the walk to and from the car will do you good! Get off the bus a stop early.
• Try ditching the TV remote – if only for a couple of evenings a week. If you have a cordless phone, make calls while wandering around the house or garden – every step counts.
• Carry your groceries home – carrying a few light bags is great for your arms.
• Take up an active hobby like…. A walk in the park; Bicycling; Swimming; Dancing; Bowling; snowshoeing; dog walking etc.
• Do household chores, such as folding clothes, washing dishes or ironing, while watching television.
• Do stretching or strength training exercises while while watching television or reading the newspaper.
• Wash your car by hand rather than using a drive through car wash.
• Move around the house when checking text messages and email on your mobile phone.
There are lots of ways to burn calories without joining a gym. The thought you should have in the back of your mind during your day is “I shouldn’t sit to do this”. If in some way you can stand or move to do the task you have to do, take the standing alternative, you’ll feel better longer.
February 2012 – Happy February!
If wintertime has you feeling as if you’re stuck in your own personal version of Groundhog Day, living the same 24 hours over and over again, now’s the moment to break out of your rut. Winter can seem remarkably short when you have activities you enjoy doing outdoors. Being active outdoors allows you to breathe fresh air, get your vitamin D in the sunshine and may even give you a renewed sense of motivation. If you’re not into buying skis, snowshoes or skates, no worries, all you have to do is get on your winter boots – and your boot grippers for any icy spots – and use what’s in your neighbourhood or local park. Dress in layers, stay hydrated and get back to nature with these simple and effective activities that will keep you engaged in physical activity all through the winter. All it takes is a little imagination.
Pump up your heart
- Walking or running intervals. You can vary your intervals by fast walking or jogging for 30 seconds and then walking 30 seconds.
- Hill walking or running. Make good use of any hills. Really pump your arms to get up there. Walk back down.
- Markers. Use trees, telephone poles and street signs as markers. Walk to the first (closest) mark, jog back. Then walk to the 2nd marker (a little further away) and jog back to the start point, and so on. Use 3 or 4 progressive markers.
Bodyweight strength exercises
- Squats. Stand with your feet hip-width apart, squat by bending your knees so that your thighs are parallel (or close to parallel) to the ground, but don’t allow your knees to go further forward than your toes.
- Lunges. Take a big step forward with the right foot and lower into a lunge (keeping the front knee behind the toe), step the left foot next to the right and then into a lunge on the left side.
- Push-ups. You can push up against anything – the a bar, a bench, a tree.
- Step-ups. Find any platform you can step on to. Step on and off with alternate legs. For power, go for a smaller platform but do fast steps. For strength, choose a higher platform and keep it slow and controlled.
- Pull-ups. Use any bar that you can reach and grip, like a playground’s monkey bars. Try your first pull up. It may be tough, and one is great to start out with, but add more over your next workouts.
- Jumps. Try jumping jacks, scissor jumps (alternating right and left feet forward) two-footed jumps (on flat ground and up steps), long jumps, jumps on and off a platform, jumps into squats, and hopping on one foot
January 2012 – New Year – Best Year
Thinking about something will not make it happen. Thinking that you want to take holidays, does not transport you to your holiday destination. To make this year your best year, you need to: be clear about your priorities and what matters most to you; identify goals; and create an action plan that will keep you true to your commitments. Reflecting on the questions below will help you get started on making 2012 your best year.
New Year – Best Year Action Plan
- What do you want for you this year?
- What is your most important New Year desire, goal or intention?
- Why does this matter to you?
- What is the best possible outcome you seek?
- What do you need to do in order to create this outcome?
- What do you need to let go of to achieve it?
- What do you need to change to achieve it?
- What or who do you need to support yourself?
- How will you measure your success?
Remember:
- Take some time to reflect on these questions.
- Go over these questions more than once to become really clear about what you will comit to.
- Giving your goal priority and allocating your time, effort and energy to this priority will give you the outcome you seek.
- It’s all about making choices that support your goal; and you have the power to make the choices that will see you succeed.
- If your goal will take you a while to achieve, divide it into smaller mini-goals.
- Celebrate your achievements along the way.
- Seek out the help of friends, family and professionals to support you in your “best year”.