GRAVITY

What do we think of when we think of youth? -- strength, flexibility, and energy.

 

I have been physically fit for over a decade. I’m 46 years old and I’m in better shape than men half my age. My blood pressure is terrific, I look great in my clothes, I have energy throughout the day, and I don’t diet.

 

But I wasn’t always fit. In my late 20’s, my weight got up to the high 190’s. I drank beer and alcohol, I smoked, and I rarely exercised. My height to weight ratio (I’m only 5 foot 8 ½ ) was unbalanced and unhealthy (Source). I had a poor self-image, I didn’t like to go out, and I stayed away from recreational activities with my friends and family. But I wanted to be in shape. I tried the local YMCA, I bought a bike, I walked, I ran, I tried fasting, dieting--all with no success. By my mid 30’s, I began to feel like I’d never get in shape.

 

By this time, I began to look at the home-exercise programs that were starting to come out. I tried many of these programs and got mixed results. But the one thing they all had in common was that they were all faddish. This is what inspired me to create my own program.

 

A program designed around my life. A program that wouldn’t demand hours of my time or bore me to death, a program that would challenge me every day. A program in which I could eat the food that I liked while remaining lean, strong, toned, and flexible. I wanted a multi-purpose body capable of anything! So I studied and came up with a system that transformed my body into a fat-burning dynamo by incorporating every muscle for maximum results in the shortest amount of time.

 

Cardio, yoga, stretching, and strength training

 

The body needs variety to grow. Whether it’s vitamins for physical growth or experiences for emotional and psychological growth, variety is essential.  Working out is no different. However, the problem with most exercise programs is that they focus only on one muscle group or one aspect of fitness while completely ignoring other areas.

 

I went out and bought some boxing gloves, protective gear, boxing books and videos and taught myself how to shadowbox.  With the help of a friend, I practiced all the basic movements like bobbing, weaving, slipping, forward, backward, and lateral footwork. In a months’ time, I’d lost 10 pounds doing these movements. By the second month, my friend and I began light sparring.  By the end of this month, I’d replaced 15 pounds of fat on my stomach and around my sides with lean muscle! I bought and studied books and videos on kick-boxing. Combined with our sparring sessions, the inclusion of lifting my legs was like adding a turbocharger. The flab melted off my back and sides like warm butter. Gradually, the movements of punching and kicking had molded my back and waist into an athletic V-shape.  The side-kicks tightened my butt and thighs as well. The punches and arm-blocks had carved definition in my biceps, triceps, shoulders, and forearms.  Most importantly, unlike the boring exercises in the gyms I once frequented, the workouts I had developed were fun and short. I later researched, practiced, and incorporated cross-training into my workout system.

 

Family and friends were amazed at the new me. I had to buy new clothes because the clothes I had were too big. My high blood pressure disappeared. My cholesterol numbers improved. I looked and felt years younger! But I was getting older and I started to think about the future. I needed a fitness program I could use for the rest of my life. This is when I began to explore exercise routines outside of my own.

 

I have had knee pain my entire life, which only worsened as I got older. When my doctor told me that I had arthritis in both knees I was devastated. I was only 42 years old! How could I have arthritis? I scaled back my workouts and started gaining weight. One day out of desperation, I went by the local library and checked out a book on yoga because I’d heard that it was easy on the knees. At that time, my idea of yoga was that it involved a lot of stretching and that mostly women did it.

 

I studied the yoga moves on my own. Yoga opened my eyes to how out of shape I was.  As the weeks progressed, the pain in my knees decreased and my legs got stronger. I felt muscles throughout my body that I’d never felt before. And when I went back to jumping rope, cross training and kickboxing, my legs felt springier.

 

Now I want to share what I’ve learned about physical fitness with those who are also ready to make a positive change in their lives.

 

Motivation

 

It can be hard to motivate yourself. We live in a compressed culture where there seems to be simply too many things for us to do and not enough time to do them all.

 

Motivating yourself is very hard to do, especially when you think about going to a gym and spending an hour or 2 doing something that’s hard, repetitive and boring. Motivating yourself is also hard if the results you want take a year or more to attain. It is very hard to stay motivated at anything that’s a long time in coming or anything that doesn’t deliver as much as you invest. Another factor that makes self-motivation difficult in getting fit is an unrealistic expectation of what the end result will be. For instance, if you are 5 foot 2 you will never look like a 6 foot 2 supermodel simply because you are comparing apples to oranges. If you are 5 foot 2 and 194 pounds, a realistic expectation should be to be the best 5 foot 2 woman you can be. This could mean trimming 30-40 pounds off of your frame, which would make you healthier and help you look more proportional for your height. Another obstacle you may encounter in motivating yourself to get in shape is the company that you keep. People, by nature, tend to associate with others who have the same values and lifestyles; this is our comfort zone. We just simply feel more comfortable around others who make us feel like we fit in, which is why you are more likely to see overweight people in social situations with other overweight people.

 

The greatest enemy of motivation would probably be, as it is in all areas of life, peer pressure. There is an enormous amount of pressure from the media, our family, friends, strangers, and co-workers to be unhealthy! This may sound harsh but it is true even though those who engage in this social bullying are unaware of their involvement in the economic agenda to keep people from being healthy. There’s a lot of money to be made off of unhealthy people. If the government acted against the fast food industries, restaurants, and manufactures of high-fat foods the way they’ve acted against the tobacco companies such an initiative would have a devastating effect on our economy. On a personal level, it would be very hard to lose weight unless one surrounded herself with supportive people in all areas of her life. There are always going to be people who claim to be supportive, but if these folks are themselves engaged in unhealthy lifestyles their support could easily become contempt. No one wants to be left behind and your resolve to be healthier could inspire those around you to be healthier also; on the other hand, your new outlook could bring out insecurities in those who have grown comfortable with you being out of shape. I’ve witnessed this firsthand. When you change, others are forced to change as well.

 

This is why a trainer can be a valuable ally in helping you get fit. The key to success in life is mentoring.

 

Best times to workout

 

Mornings, as opposed to evenings, are the best times to workout because it’s at the beginning of the day, you’re getting it out of the way, and you’re getting that boost to carry you throughout the day.

 

Evenings are best for yoga and stretching to alleviate tension in the muscles; these are especially beneficial to those who have jobs requiring them to sit for long periods

 

Lifestyle factors

 

The best diet is one where you reduce as opposed to eliminating altogether. Crash diets and fad diets don’t work because they are based on starving the body. And diets don’t work because they are based on a temporary weight loss plan (Source). Also, when you try to lose weight by depriving the body, it responds by slowing the metabolism, which makes it harder to lose weight (Source).   

 

When was the last time you went to a pancake house, an all you can eat buffet, a fast food chain, etc. and seen anyone who looked healthy or in shape? 

 

In order to lose weight and get toned, you have to change the way you think about food and the way you think about your body. The body is a machine in which healthy functioning is based on a 50/50 output to input ratio, which evens out when the amount of fuel intake is equal to the amount of energy output. For example, you have a desk-job where you sit 8 or more hours 5 days a week and your physical activity is restricted to basic activities such as household chores, shopping, walking short distances such as shopping, getting in and out of the car, etc. All total, your caloric expenditure in a 24-hour period is somewhere between 300-400 calories. In contrast, you may stop in a coffee-shop on your way to work, grab a coffee from, say, Starbucks (the calories in coffee are minimal, and, imo, not worth counting) + a sausage, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich which clocks in at about 500 calories-- you’ve already exceeded your caloric expenditure by 100 calories. Lunchtime, you and a friend may go grab a box of fried rice (I’m guessing that a ½ order-sized box of fried rice with meat may be somewhere between 800-900 calories); dinner-time, your meal may consist of fast food such as McDonalds’ (Big Mac=570 calories with 32 grams of fat)+ (large fries= 540 calories with 176 grams of fat)+ (a vanilla shake=360 calories) + a “healthy” dessert (fruit ‘n yogurt parfait=280 calories- Source). Following this meal, you and your significant other may decide to take in a movie. There, you may get a large bag of unbuttered popcorn (up to 1,200 calories and 1,500 milligrams of sodium- source) + a large soda (500 calories-source). After leaving the theater, you drive home, shower, maybe watch a little television, then go to bed. Your physical activity/food consumption ratio: 400 (calories used)-(500 +900+570+540+360+280+1,500+500)=400-5,150= - 4,750! This means you consumed almost 5000 more calories than you used! And after 6-8 hours sleep, you wake up and restart this deadly cycle. In a 7-day period, using this number as an average without taking into account other variables such as weekend eating patterns, processed foods, etc., your caloric deficit would be 4,750X7, or 33,250 calories! This number may frighten you and it should because I know people, including family members, whose caloric intakes greatly exceed this model. What’s real alarming are what I call the “passive” calories contained in snacks like potato chips and candies--foods we consume in-between these meals.     

 

Gravity over weights

 

Who needs weights when all you need is gravity? The function of weights is to intensify the force of gravity. But if you understand the principal of resistance training, you’ll see that you are all you need to get toned.   It’s all about leverage and the exercises I created will not only burn away excess fat but doing my workouts will also tone, define, and strengthen your entire body from head to toe.