Healthy lifestyle progress

I always have to take a day off after 5 or 6 days of jogging or hiking. The body needs a rest.

The right shoes are extremely important. But rather than ordering them sight unseen, I'd go to an athletic shoe store and try them on. There are many different styles, and more importantly many different lasts (the form the shoe is built on). Some extremely well-made shoes will not fit your feet because the last is shaped differently than your foot is. Two pairs of socks often helps. I always wear two pairs, whether jogging or hiking.

Be warned: Okra is slimy!!! Used in soups, it thickens the soup, and is wonderful. Eaten plain, it is just like eating snot. Even with tomatoes and corn, it is likely to put you off of vegetables forever. Don't throw the can away, but save it for when you are making a really big pot of soup and you need a thickener. You will find it used in gumbo (when you buy your vegetarian cookbook) and that is one of the world's great culinary pleasures. But eaten plain, well, I rank it with huitlacoche, and you don't even want to know what that is!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Dec 5 2006, 09:10 AM) [snapback]357880[/snapback]</div>

Recovery is absolutely essential. It is during that time the muscles grow, and if resistance/weight training, fat is burned. If your intake is less than what your body needs, it will take the energy from the fat reserves. It usually takes at least 24 hours for muscles to recover. Walking every other day might be a good schedule.

My workout schedule is 6 weeks on and 1 week off.
I workout 5 days a week (M-F) for 1 hour with the weekends off.
During the weekends, I can also cheat (within reason) on my diet.

I might also suggest eating more often (5 small meals) rather than 3 large meals a day. The theory is your body will get used to a continuous supply of food and therefore ramp up its metabolism and change from a storage mode to a burning mode (fat storage is a biological method to avoid starvation during periods of lack of food.) I actually eat better at work than I do during the weekends because of my routine: Breakfast, 10 am, Lunch, 3:00 pm, Dinner. Some say a later meal is OK to, but I don't do that.

 

Second the rest days for running/walking - same concept as weight training.

If you look at a running schedule for a marathon or other long distance running, the week has alternate hard/easy days with a day off or at least a cross training day.

 

"I found some canned okra"

My wife and I rarely eat anything from a can or jar. Freshness is the key to both good taste and good nutrition. Restaurant food is very rarely fresh - another reason we avoid eating out. Asians are especially picked about freshness. Last night we had a live fish from a Chinese grocery store in Queens, NY (by the way, we are lucky to live in a city in which it is possible to get every kind of fresh food) and it was so fresh that it still twitched a bit even after it was cleaned. In the summer we grow our own tomatoes and eggplants and there is just no comparison in favour between store-bought and homegrown.

As for special shoes - I just wear the same rubber-soled leather shoes I wear to work. In fact, I mainly walk during the working day at lunch hour and on breaks, so I don't have to go out in the dark during the evening. I have not had blisters. Sometimes I walk on a rubber track at the high school and that does feel nice and soft.

I don't worry about any special diet - I eat butter, jam, eggs, fatty ribs, etc, but in small portions. My diet is high in quality and low in quantity. We do prefer organic eggs and milk for the taste. As for "rest days", I don't find this necessary. Far from being tired, I have more energy and really want to walk every day.

As I said, I think losing weight is not complicated. It doesn't require special diets or exercise equipment. You should actually enjoy your food and the walking as you lose weight. It is a great feeling when your clothes start to get too loose.

 

The suggestion came up for walking every other day... good idea if you find that you're too sore to move. But in the situation, probably not what you want to do. Cardiovascular exercise (running/walking/swimming/bike riding) is good for the body every day (with the occasional once per week rest day). Lifting, on the other hand, needs some planning. When i first started lifting, i would alternate days, giving each muscle group every other day off. I saw some improvement, but it wasn't really as much as i wanted. about a year later, i was talking with a friend of mine at Cleveland Clinic, and he recommended that i switch to a 3 day cycle - alternate muscle groups so that each group had 2 full days off between being worked. I did that, and saw more improvement in 2 months than i had in the entire previous year. I also spent half my workout each day doing cardio, which is good for the system as a whole.

So my general workout routine was to spend 15-20 minutes lifting (you can hit 1/3 of the muscle groups really well in that short of a time period), followed by 45 minutes running every day, taking Sundays off. Prior to that, i had been spending an hour lifting and another 30 minutes doing cardio each day - wasting more time with less gain.


For Marj: At the beginning here, listen to your body. If you feel you need to take a day off, then do so. if you need to take every other day off, then do so. When suddenly increasing your activity level, you want to make sure you don't over do it. Insisting on walking every day because "it's good for you" isn't good if you end up stuck in bed because your legs just don't want to move. If you can't do the activity level you'd ideally want to right now, thats fine. work out a schedule where you start at where you're comfortable and work up to where you want to be. Always push yourself a little, but not to the edge.

 

It's a good thing you posted this up, isn't it ironic we'd much rather argue almost anything other than ways to possibly make ourselves healthier?

h34r:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mystery Squid @ Dec 5 2006, 09:53 AM) [snapback]357930[/snapback]</div>

:lol:

Yeah, we argue all those other things, but this is much more of a feel good idea sharing session. If someone came on here advocating the "all chocolate and sugar" diet, i think we'd have an argument on our hands but instead it's all pretty much good advice, even if it doesn't exactly mesh very well - it's really all about what your body responds to the best, and everyone is different.

 

anything canned or boxed tends to have really high sodium content in preservatives. that's something you want to avoid as much as possible as you acclimate to your new lifestyle, but the occasional canned goods won't kill ya.

i agree with the more meals more often, but in smaller amounts. i do that too- usually 4 meals a day.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Dec 5 2006, 07:50 AM) [snapback]357927[/snapback]</div>

Absolutely 100% agree!!! I usually oppose quoting an entire post just to say "yes!" but in this case, the above post bears reading twice. Or several times. Thank you, eagle.

 

If we get into discussing the role of fast twitch muscles (short bursts) and slow twich muscles (long haul), guess what kind of engine we are talking about? (hint: no longer off-topic)

 

Lance Armstrong? He's the only person known to have increased his muscle efficiency, supposedly by converting some of his fast twitch muscles to slow twitch through all the training he did.

 

Lance is incredible, but that's not the answer.

Trying to point out how muscles work like hybrids.

Slow twitch muscles can go for a long time like gas engines - fast twitch a short time for intense loads like gas engines with electric motors.

 

A hybrid car produces energy in the bas engine, and uses the electrical system to store some of that energy to buffer the energy demands of the driver. Fast and slow twitch muscles produce energy independently, have different characteristics suitable for different kinds of work, and do not shunt energy back and forth between them.

Good try, though.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 5 2006, 01:54 PM) [snapback]358084[/snapback]</div>

So what about muscle and fat? The muscle uses energy generated by the body, much like the drive train would, and the fat stores the excess energy for later use, much like the batteries in the car.

And now this brings up a very interesting point - It's better for us all around to reduce our fat to a certain level (and generally considered unhealthy to go below a certain level). so the people who don't have enough fat to really be healthy would be like normal cars - they burn up all their energy and store very little of it. The hybrid would be like normal people - they use most of their energy, but have a little storage to get them that extra mile. so what does that make the PHEV? someone who's overweight? And i don't even want to think of the equivalent to an EV!

 

If only I had more free time to develop this thought.

Glucose (carbs) like gasoline, is simply burned.

Fat, like a battery pack is stored and going between carbs and fat - like gas to batterys, is a loss of energy. I'm talking strictly non-plugin hybrids.

The first mile or running, the heart rate is higher because the body is not "warmed up" - just like a car's ICE is getting to normal operating temperature.

A sprinter has limited endurance because it's tied to the fast twitch muscles. Drag racing a Prius would be putting a heavy strain on the batteries as well.

When an athlete pushes beyond about 85% of the maximum heart rate - it's anerobic (without oxygen) - energy consumed faster than the heart and lungs can replentish. Sort of like the electric and ICE at full throttle at the same time.

Aerobic is under about 85% of the maximum heart rate, where the body can endure the load for a long time. It's sort of like cruising on the highway and going easy on the batteries....


I'm sure holes will still be found in the analogy, but I'm still comfortable with it in general....

 

I still don't like the analogy. Perhaps it's just a matter of taste. (No reference to the cannibal thread is intended.) A car gets its energy from non-renewable fossil fuels, and belches poison as its byproduct. Even a Prius gets all its energy from gas, and even a SULEV belches some poison.

A person gets his/her energy from plants (if she/he is wise) and produces fertilizer as a waste product, which can, at least in theory, be used to grow more plants.

Only Darell's solar-powered EV can compare.

 

here's what we're having for dinner tonight if you're interested in another recipe. it's mostly chopping veggies and mixing things together, a good starter recipe.

garden pitas-

de-seed and chop a tomato
skin and chop a cucumber
slice up 3-4 green onions
dice up 2 garlic cloves
cook up some chicken breast and cut into cubes
throw all that together in a bowl.

in a separate bowl:
add together 1/4 cup lemon juice
3 tablespoons canola oil
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon basil

pour the liquid over the veggie/chicken mix and stir up to coat. throw that in the fridge for 2 hours.

chop up about 2 cups of lettuce and add it to the mix after the 2 hour refrigeration period. stir it up really well.

scoop the mix into a pita bread and enjoy.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(galaxee @ Dec 5 2006, 08:27 PM) [snapback]358210[/snapback]</div>

These are veggies, galaxee, not dead animals. Dice, spice, and enjoy.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(EricGo @ Dec 5 2006, 08:03 PM) [snapback]358219[/snapback]</div>

how do i go about de-seeding an animal anyway? :lol:

and now i'm curious, i grew up with the term "skin"... so what term am i supposed to be using here?