Thursday, March 31, 2016

Begin to exercise without overdoing it....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 3-31-2016

The value of regular exercise is so high that if you start to do it successfully, overdoing it is usually a temporary problem.

That said, overdoing it can prevent you from starting successfully.

You are likely doing it to improve your health or fitness or strength.  Overdoing it can delay those benefits.

The best news is that deliberately starting at a level which is easy and doable and short has two huge benefits:

a) By giving yourself permission to start at a level that is this easy to do, you KNOW you can do it.  So you focus ONLY and doing it at all at the time you set for it.

Studies find that people can do this and do so. And it is easy enough they follow up next time too.

Why is that so important?

ONLY the people who get that far become regular exercisers. 

The people who think of it as too hard or feel it is when they do it either never start or don’t continue.

b) Starting at a level that is this easy totally prevents overdoing it!

So, this post has two parts:

1.  How do you avoid overdoing it but still start well and make progress quickly & safely?

2.  How can you help your body thrive with fast progress instead of giving you overdoing it messages and problems?

Background:

Monday this week, Medical News Today had a study finding that overdoing it as a beginning exerciser can do more harm than good.

The data found that:

Short, high intensity cardio can cause harm if not built up to and supported well

1.  Turns out that beginners need to be careful to start with a bit shorter duration before rests and use a bit less speed or intensity than they are able to do.

2.  This also suggests that taking antioxidants and eating foods high in them is a valuable protection for those new to higher intensity cardio.

3.  AND this also suggests that taking ubiquinol and PQQ can also be needed to minimize this damage to your mitochondria or help reverse it.

Here’s the relevant quotes:

“All-out sprints may do more harm than good     March 28, 2016   written by  Yvette Brazier  

An active lifestyle may be a healthy lifestyle, but some more extreme forms of workout are best left to those who are already fit, according to new research in the journal of The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal.

Whether it is the desire for a "super-lean body" or the lure of burning calories quickly - some researchers have claimed that a person "can burn an extra 200 calories per day by putting in only 2.5 minutes of work" - high-intensity "sprint training" has been gaining popularity at gyms.

Intense exercise training can stimulate the growth of mitochondria and increase the body's capacity to use oxygen, enhancing cardiovascular fitness and strength and keeping cardiovascular disease and obesity at bay.

However, working out without short-term preparation, such as warming up, or long-term preparation, such as building up intensity over time, can cause damage to the body.

Intense workouts damage muscles, reduce mitochondrial functionality

Canadian and European researchers, led by Robert Boushel, director of the University of British Columbia's School of Kinesiology in Canada, analyzed tissue samples from 12 male volunteers in Sweden.

All the participants were healthy but described themselves as either untrained or only moderately active.

The men took part in high-intensity training over a 2-week period. The exercise regimen involved repeated 30-second all-out sprints, followed by rest periods.

The researchers observed signs of stress in the muscle tissues of the participants after carrying out ultra-intense leg and arm cycling exercises.

Tests showed that their mitochondria, the "powerhouse of cells," were only functioning at half their capacity after training, reducing their ability to consume oxygen and to defend against damage from free radicals.

Free radicals are molecules that can modify DNA and cause harm to healthy cells. High levels of free radicals appear to be a risk factor for a range of medical conditions, including premature aging, organ damage and cancer.

Boushel says the findings raise questions about what constitutes appropriate dosage and intensity of exercise for the average individual. He urges caution when encouraging the general population to participate in sprint training. 

Boushel explains that experienced and well-trained athletes accumulate antioxidant enzymes in their bodies, and these offer protection against free radicals. 

For beginners, however, he recommends starting slowly and building up intensity over time. Exercise should also take place under the eye of a trained professional or kinesiologist.

He warns:

"If you're new to going to the gym, participating in high-intensity sprint classes may increase your performance but might not be healthy for you."

The potential long-term adverse effects of high-intensity sprint training are unknown, but ongoing studies are looking at different levels of exercise and evaluating quantities and intensity of training against different biomarkers for health.”

Here’s the link to the story:

All-out sprints may do more harm than good
http://mnt.to/l/4Drn
Intense exercise training may help you boost your cardiovascular health and lose calories, but starting from scratch can lead to a buildup of unhealthy levels of free radicals. 

1.  How do you avoid overdoing it but still start well and make progress quickly & safely?

The secret is to start super easy; make progress slowly; AND, at first, as soon as you begin to feel short of breath stop to rest or slow down enough to catch your breath before speeding up again.

This is the other value of this kind of interval or variable cardio besides its time efficiency.

Other studies have found that long duration high intensity cardio that gives your heart no breaks actually causes heart damage because your heart gets no time off to recover.

Yet other studies have found that this is much worse in men than women.
This new study shows that beginners need to take it easier at first to get that protection.

What about the Indians of Mexico that run a hundred miles with no problems? 

I read the answer.  They learn it and often do it as part of a game that ensures they run faster and then stop and keep varying between the two as they run.  They perhaps do become fit enough to run those distances at a fast pace without a  break with safety.  But they learn it and get fit with a kind of moving variable cardio and often ONLY run that way.  They DO give their hearts the breaks they need to avoid damage!

Once you have done an exercise long enough making easy upgrades you begin to get used to the faster portions and the rests or slower portions.

At that point going gradually faster during the fast parts and even faster during the slow parts or resting a bit less between faster parts is safe.

By doing it gradually over weeks of exercising you develop an intuitive feel for it that protects you.

The other thing that you learn to do is to adjust to how your body is doing on a given day.

Sometimes you feel unusually good and lifting your heavy weights in slow rep strength training or going fast in your interval or variable cardio feels easier than usual.  It feels easier and stays easier longer than usual.  This enables you to make progress!

Sometimes when you are tired, particularly mentally tired, but you start your exercises anyway, as soon as you begin you get an astonishing surprise because lifting your heavy weights in slow rep strength training or going fast in your interval or variable cardio feels easier than usual.  It feels easier and stays easier longer than usual.  This enables you to make progress!

I’ve had days when I felt like I needed a crew of people to carry me to my exercises on a stretcher and then had that experience.

But other times whether you feel good psychologically at first or not, you get the reverse experience, your muscles feel tired and unrecovered or the exercises feel harder than usual or it’s harder to go fast than usual or you need to stop and slow down or rest sooner.

I’ve found to make overall progress and keep exercising regularly it helps to simply accept you are having a down day and cut yourself some slack that day.

This new research shows that doing this also protects your body when you do that.

For new exercisers, particularly men, it can be easy to overdo it at first.

So, DO NOT do that!  Force yourself to make progress more slowly than you’d like.

After several weeks of making progress every week by starting out that easy is one of the payoffs you get by taking it slow at first.  It feels great!

And, if you did overdo it, do this double.

Force yourself to exercise anyway even if you feel like a wreck.  BUT cut yourself a LOT of slack too!  Use less weight or do fewer reps or both and stop early if feels a bit too hard. Or speed up less on your faster cardio sections or shorten them or both.

2.  How can you help your body thrive with fast progress instead of giving you overdoing it messages and problems?

Do things that cause your body to become harder to damage; and do things that enable it to recover from effort faster and easier.

a) Note that one of the problems the new research found was that the oxidizing caused by overdoing it was one of the ways overdoing it caused problems.

But research found long ago that exercisers who got abundant antioxidants didn’t get the colds from hard exercise that those who got very few antioxidants did.

So, if you overdo it or become advanced enough to train hard in most sessions, got lots of antioxidants!

Eat lots of organic vegetables which have major antioxidants and hundreds of cofactors making them extra effective.  Eat organic fruits like blueberries that are super high in anti-oxidants.

Take at least 10,000 iu a day of vitamin D3; AND do NOT take NSAID over the counter drugs if you get sore.  One study found that taking the D3 reduced soreness by speeding healing while those taking NSAID’s didn’t improve.  Plus we’ve long known that taking NSAID’s increases your risk of heart disease.  So, if protecting your  heart is one reason you are exercising, take NSAID’s off your list of things to buy and use!

Take 1,000 to 3,000 mg a day of vitamin C in 500 mg capsule over each day.

If you want to do more and can, natural vitamin E and NAC and alpha lipoic acid also work well as antioxidants.

b)  As I’ve posted before, getting enough health OK protein for your body to repair and build back better after your exercise is also essential.

The Perfect Workout found research that they confirmed that getting 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight was the minimum needed.  (A Kilogram is about 2.2 pounds.  So that’s about 2 thirds of a gram or protein per pound of bodyweight.)

And, the optimum that won’t be wasted bodybuilders and power lifters have found is one gram of protein for each pound of bodyweight.

The essential thing is that all your protein intake be from health OK sources.

Whey from grass fed cows is most effective.

Beef, Lamb, and Bison from totally and ONLY grass fed sources works if you can afford it and the cooking time needed.

But eggs from pasture fed chickens and canned sardines (which are all wild caught) and canned Alaskan Salmon which is wild caught and canned cooked lentils also work and cost far less!
(Water packed canned tuna is cost effective but so high in mercury it’s best not to use it or only once every other month.)

Raw nuts if you aren’t allergic you can buy in bulk also have protein AND all the antioxidants in the vitamin E complex plus valuable minerals if you aren’t allergic to tree nuts.

c)  And, if you can afford, them there are two supplements that improve your performance if you take them at least 15 minutes before exercise AND speed your recovery after your exercise too.

Creatine works and is modestly expensive.  It works as a powder and as capsules.  But the powder costs less per use and delivers more and goes to work faster.

D-Ribose also provides an energy kick and works too as a faster recovery supplement.  It costs more than creatine and also works best as a powder mixed into water you drink before you work out.

d) Get at least 6 to 7 hours of quality sleep each night!

e)  If you do vigorous exercise most days of every week and avoid overdoing it, your body makes NEW mitochondria so your muscles gradually get younger and can create and use more energy.

But to speed recovery, create antiaging effects in the rest of your body, and protect against overdoing it, taking the supplements Ubiquinol and PQQ also help.


Note this is also a direct preventive of harm to your mitochondria from overdoing it as a new exerciser!  

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Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Advanced heart attack prevention....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 3-29-2016

The essentials are to keep your blood vessels wide open, healthy, and responsive AND to avoid things that cause them to be sticky or your blood to clot too easily.

The opposite is when you create conditions that cause damage of the surface of your arteries that your body patches a bit too much and adds calcium to the patch or makes the patch soft enough it breaks off in a chunk.

If this over-patching goes on too long so the blood vessel becomes almost blocked or stiff or both AND you do something that triggers a clot or some of the softer patching, aka plaque, to break off and block the remaining opening, you have a heart attack or ischemic (obstructive stroke.)

After this overview we list some new information on how to make your blood vessels so hard to put excessive patches on, it almost never happens!

1.  Quick overview of the things we know to prevent this:

Eating as close as you can to 6 or more servings of organic vegetables AND at least one serving of an organic fruit a day provides the natural vitamin C & phytonutrients that prevent damage in the walls of your arteries.  (This is not only one of the most effective ways to prevent heart attacks and both kinds of stroke, it cuts your risk of death from any cause too!)

Eating an inflammation preventing set of foods that include wild caught fish and extra virgin olive oil and no wheat or grain oils such as soy and corn oil AND eating no protein foods from factory-farmed fed animals fed grains AND taking DHA and curcumin and ginger prevents the inside of your blood vessels from getting the inflammation that causes patching and avoids excessive patching.

Not eating any wheat and few grains and zero sources of free high fructose and zero artificial sweetners and a low to very low amount of real sugar AND eating zero hydrogenated vegetable oils plus taking DHA and omega 3 oils and eating wild caught fish has been found to very sharply reduce triglycerides and increase HDL to high levels. 

Researchers at Harvard found this indicates that the small particle LDL that sticks into your blood vessel walls and triggers excess patching and plaque buildup stops happening because there is so little of it.

People who build up to doing vigorous exercise most days of every week directly reduce their levels of small particle LDL.  Even better, the more years in a row they do this, the greater the effect becomes!  (And, the exercise also causes longer telomeres, more mitochondria, and slows aging by doing so -- which ALSO is heart attack preventive.)

(People who drink soft drinks and eat wheat and packaged snacks and desserts and high fructose corn syrup and get no exercise have the REVERSE, sky high triglycerides and very low HDL.  That means they have a high level of small particle LDL and excess damage to their arteries and excess patching.

In people who smoke or are exposed to second hand smoke, this also happens or happens even more.  So every exposure builds up plaque and brings heart attacks and strokes nearer.)

Worse, if this plaque gets calcium added to it, your arteries become harder, easier to block and less responsive -- and you get high blood pressure.  We now know that getting enough vitamin K2 ensures the calcium you eat goes into building your bones AND removes it from your blood vessels.

2.   Wouldn’t it be great to make your blood vessels even clearer and harder to cover with excess and unneeded plaque?

Of course.

And, we now know several ways to do that besides the ones we just listed!

These particularly build on getting enough vitamin C and organic fruits and vegetables and their phyto chemicals that make your blood vessel walls strong, healthy, and pliable.

a) We posted on the findings that taking deodorized garlic prevents plaque buildup AND protects against the buildup of the soft plaque that can break away to cause large clots or blockages.

In taking deodorized garlic myself, I found that my high HDL stayed high but my triglycerides dropped a lot more.  That means that my number of small particle LDL that tend to cause plaque buildup dropped significantly!

In fact, other research found that taking the garlic plus enough vitamin C, 1000 to 3,000 mg a day, tended to REDUCE plaque.

b)  There is a measure called Lp(a) that apparently measures how sticky the insides of your blood vessels are.  If it’s high, it is predictive of increased heart attack risk.

But if it’s low, it becomes like the oil in an engine, it keeps things free flowing.

Aha!

But we know 3 ways MORE beyond these basics to lower your Lp(a) into that low range!

*Linus Pauling found that adding the amino acids proline and lysine together to enough vitamin C did that!  (If you want to do that, 500 mg capsules of lysine are easy to find.  Whole Foods has lysine as a house brand in 500 mg capsules.  But to get proline, you have to know to buy or order the 500 mg capsules of proline from NOW supplements.)

**Secondly, taking niacin does incredibly heart protective things.  Because it increases HDL and lowers triglycerides and LDL, we know it lowers the level of your small particle LDL!

But it turns out it ALSO lowers Lp(a) too!

(Niacin can produce a flush reaction which I think of as experiencing burning away heart attack risk.  But if it gets too much it’s like getting an instant if temporary sunburn.  You turn red and feel too hot.

There are several ways to get its effect without overdoing this flush or getting it at all.

You can take a 300 mg tablet of niacin from Whole Foods after your two largest meals.

(Some people are more sensitive to it and need to take a half tablet after their largest meal only.)

But you can get 500 mg of niacin with no flush at all by taking two 300 mg capsules of insositol hexaniacinate.  As your body gradually separates that into the 250 mg of niacin in the capsule and the B vitamin insositol, you get such a slow exposure to the niacin there is no flush.

My wife and I take two a day of those.

***I just found out there is yet a third way to lower high Lp(a)!

AND, like the other two methods, it has extra protective benefits.

Taking 500 mg or 1,000 mg a day of NAC, n-acetyl-cysteine, has been shown to lower Lp(a)!

But taking that much also releases the unusually potent antioxidant glutathione.

That means that both your HDL and LDL are less likely to become oxidized.  And, it’s their oxidized form that causes heart disease.

Even better, the glutathione lengthens your telomeres and slows aging too!

(Jarrow sells a 500 mg capsule of NAC.)

By the way, the only way most doctors know how to treat high Lp(a) is with niacin; and they usually don’t know how to use it without causing dreadful flushing.

I’ve not been able to test it yet.  But I suspect using the three methods together we just listed with the minimal flushing from niacin is just as effective and MUCH easier to tolerate doing!   

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Thursday, March 24, 2016

Why and how to help very fat people....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 3-24-2016

I.  Why to help very fat people:

The social costs are high to very high.

a) There are exceptions; but on the average, severely obese people make less money and have poorer jobs.

(This works in reverse too of course.  People who have low income and little education consume more of the fattening foods and drinks that cause obesity and often get little exercise.

And, they watch a lot of TV which burns less calories than sleeping plus exposes them to huge amounts of ads that literally use effective brain washing techniques to make the fattening foods and drinks seem normal and appetizing.)

b)   They tend to have more trouble having good luck getting boyfriends or girl friends or marriage partners; have more trouble getting desirable ones; and have more trouble with their relationships.

c)   Even nicer people tend to think of them as less attractive and able to be self-disciplined.

They often look older than they are.

The mean and thoughtless people are worse and can treat them very badly indeed.

At the same time, they feel they deserve courteous treatment and to only be judged by people who really get to know them.

Worse, they may have had to endure harsher lives as children or young adults in other ways than most people.

And, worst of all, they may have made strong and disciplined efforts to become less fat using methods that didn’t work.  They may have even done this more than once.

So judging them as uncaring and undisciplined is often wrong.

And, on top of that they often feel as if they failed personally which takes an even bigger toll on their self esteem.

e)  Given those experiences, it should come as no surprise that offering them help with fat loss makes them anxious or angry and that most of them most of the time resent the offer & don’t even consider it.

Paradoxically, if they could achieve permanent fat loss, all of these effects would be less or go away completely.

The health costs can be very high as well.

a)  Their mobility is restricted.  And, as they get older, this can put them into a walker or wheel chair or nursing home at a younger age or that they otherwise could have avoided entirely.

b)  This is compounded by the fact that it has been found that the excess weight grinds off the cartilage on the inside of their knees over time in many cases.

That produces pain or further mobility restriction or both.

c) Their internal or visceral fat is enough to cause a boa constrictor or vise like effect on their heart which can hasten heart disease and directly causes high blood pressure.

d) The foods and drinks and lack of exercise that caused them to be that fat and keep them that way also are almost worse than smoking.  Besides heart disease, they cause strokes, and Alzheimer’s disease; and type 2 diabetes and more.

And, like smoking, they slash both their years of life AND cut their years of healthy life that is worth living even more.

II. How to help very fat people.

The solution comes in three parts:

a)  Offer them things they need or want that they can do without ANY direct focus on fat loss!

*Offer them help feeling better and having better self-esteem.  Offer them help reducing anxiety and depression.  And, show them ways to get better treatment by other people and increase their income.

Even try highlighting that these things are doable without any change in their weight or fat loss efforts!

(You turn off depression in large part by beginning to use and then begin to do better the exact same foods and exercises that are the foundation of permanent fat loss without hunger!

In fact, doing this well, many of them will discover they are already becoming less fat and losing weight!)

But by offering the depression and anxiety relief only you bypass the emotional land mines that an offer of fat loss reliably triggers.

**AND offer them ways they can dramatically protect their health without any focus on fat loss!

Specifically, we know that fit and fat people can be healthier than sedentary skinny people.

We know that fatter people who manage to have low chronic inflammation are MUCH healthier than such people who have high chronic inflammation.

And, the upgrades in food and drink and the supplements needed for dramatically effective improvements in blood sugar and heart attack risk and stroke risk and Alzheimer’s risk AND the risk of death from ANY cause work superbly whether you are fat or not.

Here again though, those food changes tend to cause fat loss without hunger and are a key building block in how to lose fat you keep off without hunger.  In fact those changes often result in a 25 pound fat loss with no other effort!

b) Offer those who actually use those solutions the methods we now know produce fat loss without excessive hunger and that are so easily sustainable that the fat removed stays off.

This is workable because they now have better self esteem, more energy, and have become more effective and persistent problem solvers too -- so they feel up to the effort!

AND, you turn off depression by beginning to use and then begin to use better the exact same foods and exercises that are the foundation of permanent fat loss without hunger!

In fact, doing this well, many of them will discover they are already becoming less fat and losing weight!

c)  Help them solve the problems that prevent fat loss and tend to be even more likely in very fat people.

Research has found that both being that fat from any cause and becoming fat from chronic, severe stress each create different biochemical messengers that tend to lock the extra fat in place and cause it to be resistant to removal.

Other people remain fat because they take drugs that ensure they stay fat.

Yet other people remain fat because their body’s have excessive mercury or other pollutants.

For some people without realizing it, they have fattening bacteria in their gut that tend to keep them fat.


Conclusion:

It’s both much more urgent that really fat people be helped than most people know.

And, it’s also much more doable than most doctors or public health people think it is!

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Tuesday, March 22, 2016

The Great Value of Good Sleep....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 3-22-2016

A.  Good sleep is known to clean up and recharge your whole brain.

Your brain literally compacts to take up less space and allow more cleaning solution to flow through the large passages that then open up.  This happens during deep sleep.

The more of your brain you use, the more of this you need.

So, if you are a woman, because both sides of your brain communicate well and you tend to use all of your brain, you need more sleep.

If you talk a lot in your work or use words to think through decisions and make many decisions, brain scans also show your whole brain lights up.

Conversations seem effortless since you have done them since you were a toddler, but brain scans show they are more like going to a gym that causes you to work out like crazy without stop and use all of your body in the exercises besides.

Those are true of both men and women.

And, other research found that people who have the best functioning brains and can think on their feet with good results also have better communication between parts of their brain and use more of it.  This apparently enables them to think on their feet well by having quick access to ALL or most of their relevant memories to see the likely solutions or best moves to try.

So if you want your efforts to make your life work well and be productive in your work if your work needs those skills, having enough deep sleep each night for this process to work well has great value.

B.  About three weeks ago the Resparate blood pressure device’s email on health topics reported a study that showed if you want your life to go well,
 you also must have the better emotional control and sanity to feel good, make the beneficial choices when tempted, and have rewarding and stable relationships.

The study found that you have that if you get enough effective sleep, you tend to have that.

But if you don’t have enough effective sleep you are set up to do very poorly indeed in those areas unless you are as prepared what happens to you as a US Navy Seal about to go into combat.

The study found that:

Sleep deprivation boosts emotionality and cuts cognitive control but not level of activation...rationalized cravings and hostility often result!

We post often on fat loss

1.  This can stop or threaten to stop the most important fat loss change and practice:

Stopping all consumption of things that DO taste good that you used to eat or drink before you know the consequences.

If you know enough and have preset permanent policies and focus on the benefits of the policies and the harms of ignoring them and focus on “I know better than doing that and I no longer consume those things that make me fat and sick.” you may do well anyway but it does get much harder!

"That does taste good but it causes the heart disease like my Dad had that I NEVER want to get!

I don't eat that stuff because I know better than the poor ignorant people who do."

But if you aren’t prepared with that and used to using it, lack of sleep boosts the signals in your brain and how emotionally driven and cuts your access to that part of your brain.

That can result in the kind of eating that again makes you fat and sick.

So one solution is to have the skills of focusing on your decision and policy and the good reasons for it and its benefits so well practiced, you do it even when you have less power and connection to that part of your brain and are energized by emotion too!

The other solution is to get enough effective sleep to avoid that problem!

2.  This can cause the key cause of hostile type A behavior that causes heart disease to be "extremely well rationalized" with far less ability to see how damaging it is or stop doing it.

This can also cause divorce and being fired from jobs and being hated by people who know you at its worst.

Just like beneficial eating habits, the more you are used to treating people as their best selves and with kindness and realizing that most of the things they do that irritate you are temporary and/or can be overcome or made fewer and may even be better next time, the better you can overcome feeling more irritable and having the thinking part of your brain on low power.

The other solution is to get enough effective sleep to avoid that problem!

3.  For both things, it’s also been found that getting abundant omega 3 oils, particularly DHA, reduces the overdriven emotional activation and makes it possible for you to access your more positive thinking brain better.

C.  To get enough effective sleep, several things help:

1.  For most people:

Almost always sleeping so that you get up at the same time each day;

Getting at least 6 hours of sleep almost every day;

And, getting about 7 to 7 and a half hours or a bit more of sleep several nights each week.

2.  Doing things that enable you to fall asleep quickly, have several sessions of deep sleep and rarely wake up before you have enough deep sleep also help.

You can write a book on the many effective ways to do that.  And people have.

That said, here are some effective ways most people have access to:

It helps enormously if your bedroom is dark, cool, and quiet,

a) Banning TV’s from the room where you sleep is critical and usually doable.

b) But blackout curtains, quiet and super-powerful air conditioning to ensure your bedroom is cool, and moving to a quiet location &/or getting sound insulation and reverse soundwave generators to ensure quiet can be a bit challenging to impossible sometimes.

But for less than $20 just a few days from now, you can have the darkness part done!

Nidra sells a sleep mask on Amazon you can get and have delivered for that within days from today.

And, if you travel often, it comes in a box you can use to safely transport it along with you.

I got one and it just about doubled my sleep quality from the first night I used it!

c)  There are several ways to ensure you fall asleep quickly or give you the leverage to usually do so:

*Doing vigorous exercise early each morning is proven to be one of the most powerful and effective ways to do this.

And, it can be quite time efficient.  7 minutes of brisk walking works.  4 sets of fast jump rope for 30 seconds to 60 seconds with rests in between works.  Doing 4 sets of fast abdominal exercises in about 6 minutes with rests in between works.  So does half an hour of slow rep strength training if you have the time for it and the weights at home.

*Taking melatonin works.  If you are younger, half a one mg tablet just before bed can work while you need more as you get older until at age 72 I take two 2.5 mg chewable lozenges of melatonin.  (If you get less help falling asleep, you may need more.  And, if you still feel the effects the next morning, you definitely want to use less.)

d)  The first rate, effective, and easy to use advice I got from my sleep doctor also helps a lot:

Only have alcoholic drinks BEFORE dinner and usually stick to just one. 

That ensures that by the time you go to bed and then to go into deep sleep, your body will have processed the alcohol enough to prevent it from keeping you from deep sleep as it otherwise does quite reliably!

Only have caffeine or drinks that contain it 6 to 8 hours BEFORE you go to bed.  If you drink it later in the day than that it cuts your deep sleep by as much as a whole hour

e)  Two other ways to get more deep sleep:

The herbal supplement valerian reduces the effect of even severe stress on you (It was used
during World War II bombing raids to help people sleep anyway!).

But best of all, it increases the amount of deep sleep you get and how restorative it is!

I take two capsules at bedtime since I learned that.  (You do have to get a larger container to keep the supplement in that you can seal because the active ingredient in Valerian that does all this has a stinky and very pungent smell.)

Another supplement that was in a Medical News Today study on the messengers your brain uses to power down also increases the amount of deep sleep you get if you take it as a supplement at bedtime is GABA.  100 to 150 mg is effective; but it’s easiest to get as a 250 mg capsule as a supplement which I’ve found not to be too much.


D.  What to NEVER do!  Do NOT, repeat NOT, take prescription sleep drugs EVEN once if you can possibly help it!

They increase your risk of death considerably including deaths from sleep driving and more.

They increase your chances of getting cancer soon MORE than smoking.

They do NOT give you more deep sleep and often leave you too groggy to wake up well the next day.

Worse, they are extremely addictive.  For some people they are as hard to quit as nicotine, cocaine, and heroin combined.


Literally, the only safe amount of hypnotic sleep drugs to take is zero!  

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Monday, March 21, 2016

My monthly fatloss report....

Today's Post:  Monday, 3-21-2016

A.  Here's the key news. 

1.  I gained about one pound from 162 to 163.

BUT the new method I’m using still worked!

I’d gained some weight on the scale the week before -- and the week of my 40% cut back, I did lose that 3 pounds back!

[Change of plans from last month as all I’ll be covering in this report is the new calorie cut back method that worked and my strength training and other exercises that burn extra calories or add muscle which burns extra calories.  The other topics will now be separate posts.]

2.  AND, since last month, I gained a half inch on my chest; lost a quarter inch off my waist; and a quarter inch off my hip measurement.

Most of my fat is on my belly and visceral fat inside my belly and on my hips. So that’s good news:

Because I want to gain more muscle in my upper back and chest than I lose in fat and want to add more muscle in my buttocks and lower back AND show all my fat gain on my waist, So, THAT is a reasonably good sign.

B.  My calorie cut back week:

I keep the added whey protein and most of my protein foods such as milk from grass fed cows at breakfast I mix the whey into, the wild caught canned & smoked salmon, and 4 whole eggs from pastured chicks a week, and my regular nonfat cottage cheese; and the protein I get from broccoli and artichoke hearts.

But I cut some of my cheese from grass fed cows about in half by eliminating a third of it in one set of dishes and substituting all of it with nonfat cottage cheese at other times.

I cut out two thirds of my oatmeal and eat lentils instead. (This step also eliminated about 24 ounces or more a week of the whole milk from grass fed cows I was having on the oatmeal on those two days each week.)

I eat lentils instead of pinto beans AND eat less beans by about a third.

I cut my dark chocolate and Brazil nuts in half.

(I cut my Tablespoons of Apple Sauce each week from 10 to 3; and have made that every week too since my first week doing it.)

I do still eat 100% of my daily piece of fruit.

And, I cut my extra virgin olive oil one Tablespoon servings from 10 to 7 by using only one each day instead of adding a second one three times a week.

And, because of its extremely high nutrition, very appetite reducing effect, and its very health enhancing very strong percentage of monosaturated oils, I kept the two tablespoons a day of avocado paste.

Because I kept the things I kept that were high protein, or high nutrition, or high fiber and mostly cut extra fat or carbs, I wasn’t even hungrier than usual much to my great surprise!

And, since it is only every four weeks, I won’t get a cumulative effect of extra hunger because of the failsafe famine response either.

So losing over 11 pounds more fat for a total of 16 or more this year, looks like a lock!

The math says it is! 

(Forty percent less a quarter of the time is 10% less calories for the year.)

Since it has that likely potential and is that easily doable, I certainly will do it!

But there is more, the other lower carb week and every week, I’ll keep up some of what clearly works to reduce my carb intake a bit but not my protein intake.

For, example, I have been eating the double dose of whey every other day otherwise.

Now, I’ll do it every day.  And, I’ll eat a bit less no sugar apple sauce every week and more lentils than pinto beans every week.

(See D below also!)

C.  What if I also get the muscle gain effect of Vince Del Monte’s students and gain five or six pounds of muscle over the upcoming year too!

If that happens my waist will finally shrink and I’ll lose visceral fat with the extra health benefits that produces!

So I am working to make that happen too!

I’ll have more on that next month.

D.  To ensure my fat loss happens this year and minimize gaining fat back during each four weeks, AND to help prevent weight gain on my week I cut back some but not 40% and force progress each month, I’ll cut back more but not as much as my big cut down that week every four weeks.

To help prevent weight gain on my week I cut back some but not 40% and force progress each month, I’ll cut back more but not as my big cut back week every four weeks.

(Since last month, it’s clear I need to do a bit more that week to ensure progress each month.)

I’ll keep 100 percent of the protein that week but will also eat lentils instead of pinto beans AND I’ll  cut my dark chocolate and Brazil nuts in half.

I’ll also cut my extra virgin olive oil with one Tablespoon servings from 10 to 7 by using only one each day instead of adding a second one three times a week where I was not doing so before.

Plus, I cut my Tablespoons of Apple Sauce each week from 10 to 3; and have made that every week too since my first week doing it.

Could you do the same thing?

You can if you eat a regular style of eating almost every day that you tweak in similar way; you eat a double serving of whey each day; eat or drink nothing that is harmful or super fattening such as soft drinks or wheat foods; and you do some form of power lifting or superslow strength training each week.  

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Thursday, March 17, 2016

Why strength training removes extra fat....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 3-17-2016

It’s still surprisingly little known that effective strength training removes extra fat. 

And that goes double for women!

Strength training removes extra fat in several ways.

1.  People who are working to lose fat who get too hungry fail. 

They eventually eat too much or worse they eat fattening foods to do so,

People who do effective strength training can eat more and still lose fat.

And, if they also eat a high protein diet of health OK protein foods, they get LESS hungry and ONLY lose fat besides.

So, they can lose fat without the hunger that causes failure!

2.  Muscles that are not used atrophy.  How does that relate to strength training and excess fat?

People who don’t do effective strength training lose about 1% of their muscle mass each year after about age 24.

Most people adopt a food intake they are comfortable with and don’t change it.

Even if they don’t eat fattening foods, by age 44 they have 20% less muscle mass. 

And since muscles burn a lot of calories if they eat as they always have – which almost everyone does – by age 44 instead of about 56 % of their weight as muscle they may have started with, now about 45 % is muscle mass.

But muscle burns three times as many calories as fat.  So if they eat as they always have, instead of just losing 9% of their bodyweight, they add three times that much as fat.

So, if they start at 160 pounds, they replace that lost 14 pounds of muscle with 43 pounds of fat.  Only 29 pounds show up on the scale.  But that is enough fat gain to slow them down and often help give them health problems that this added body fat causes.

Worse, by age 64 without strength training, they will have lost a total of 29 pounds of muscle and gained 86 pounds of fat of which 57 will show on the scale.

Strength training can totally prevent this.  

And, though it’s harder to reverse, effective strength training can reverse this AND has done so for many people!

This happens to BOTH men and women.  Some men do strength training and prevent it.

But most women think of strength training as something only men do and do not. 

Worse, the women who do what they think of as strength training use such tiny weights -- even for how strong they actually are in the beginning, many of the women who strength train are not even close to doing it effectively!

(By the way, women have ZERO need to worry that effective strength training will make them look unattractive.  The women who do strength training well have dramatically better looking bodies than other women.)

If you can afford one or two sessions a week and a few hundred a month per session and live near one, The Perfect Workout solves this problem for women and does it well.

Each session only has 20 minutes of strength training and takes about a half hour visit each time.

But because they move quickly from exercise to exercise AND on every one you use enough weight to be challenging, you get effective strength training in just one or two a week of these sessions.

Not only that, each one comes with a personal coach who only has you in your session to help you work hard enough to get results.  They also cheer you on and encourage you.

Does this work for women too! Oh yes! By now they have hundreds of testimonials from women clients it has really helped.

Not only that, because they use slow rep strength training, the challenging weights are less than what you might use for fast reps AND because you start each lift a bit slower too, the combination makes injuries dramatically less likely.

(In my case, when I read slow rep strength training in this style was effective, even before I began the sessions at The Perfect Workout my wife and I signed up for, I tried the style using the dumbbells and the exercises I had been doing at home. 

WOW!  As soon as I was done, each of the muscles I’d used felt “pumped” and super well exercised.  This had never happened doing fast reps before that.

We posted yesterday about how this lactic acid build up causes your body to make more mitochondria and slow aging in addition to the increases in strength and muscle mass!

Slow rep strength training does this for me when regular speed reps never did!

After several months our costs went up and I had to stop going to The Perfect Workout.

But I simply kept doing the slow rep exercises at home two times a week.

Now, I can do 12 reps super slow and about 24 reps a bit slower with 50 pounds in each hand in an exercise that caused me to get sore doing 9 reps with 35 pounds to begin with.

I can see my arms and shoulders are slightly bigger and much less fat than when I began.

To make more progress overall I’m now working on two ways to use more weight in the exercises that use the much bigger muscles in my lower back, glutes, and the rest of my legs.)

The first solution I’m working on is to use more weight at home.

But the better solution I’m headed for is to be able to go to a gym that has heavier barbells.

For bench presses and squats I may need to use less weight since for those and the heaviest weights, you need spotters.  But I’ll still use much heavier weights than I have at home.

But for deadlifts I’ll be able to do more and use more challenging weights.

Young men who do those lifts well and make progress can gain 15 to 25 pounds of muscle in their first year.

(Women gain less and their higher fat percentage even when healthy hides much of that.)

Since I’m 72 and will be limited in how often I go, I expect to gain far less.

But if my at home solution enables me to gain 3 pounds more muscle, because I control how much I eat, that means I’ll lose 9 pounds of fat and be 6 pounds lighter on the scale.

Then, if I can add another 3 pounds of muscle by going to a gym with its heavier weights, I’ll lose another 9 pounds of fat for a total of 18 lost minus the 6 pound gain of muscle; and I’ll be 12 pounds lighter on the scale.

That will take me from 19% fat to 8% fat.  So, if I manage it, I will look and be dramatically less fat!)

3.  There is one caution to ensure strength training even when done properly is effective.

You have to eat enough protein to feed your exercised muscles for them to get stronger and larger.

a) For example, The Perfect Workout had a woman client who was working hard but getting unusually poor results.

After finding out what she ate, they discovered she was eating an unusually low protein diet.

They also found research showing that the minimum protein intake to support effective strength training is about 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight.

They had her add enough protein foods to get her to that level and she promptly began to make progress again.

In her case she was only about 132 pounds or 60 kilograms. So she needed 90 grams of protein each day from her food.

b) Bodybuilders and Power lifters who are the experts from actual experience in adding muscle from strength training have found that a gram of protein for each pound of bodyweight is the optimum level.

c)  Since 19% of me is fat, a lower number that looks likely to be effective is to eat a gram of protein a day for each of the 142 pounds of lean bodyweight I want to achieve instead of the 162 to 165 grams a day needed for the gram per pound of my current bodyweight.

I eat health OK dairy protein and beans and lentils and nonstarchy vegetables and nuts and wild caught salmon for most of my protein now.

But to eat that much protein I need more.

What can I do to do this?

Add a protein supplement of some kind.

But which kind is most effective?

And which version of it is safe for my health to eat?

Over fifty years ago they answered the first part of that question.

Research was done that found that taking amino acids in the same percentage of each one that makes up human lean tissue produces the most gains from strength training.

But how can anyone afford to have that measured and get a custom-tailored amino acid drink with those percentages?!

Recently I found out there is no need to do that because a food with those exact percentages already exists!!

Whey has exactly the same amino acid percentage as lean tissue and muscle.

Not only that there are several sources of whey from cows fed only grass that are the safest to eat.

(I like and use unflavored grass fed whey from Jarrow.  But there are other kinds that cost more and may be slightly better for you. Whole Foods carries many of these.)

I get 40 extra grams of protein a day by mixing in two oversized scoops of the Jarrow grass fed whey that have about 20 grams of protein each to my daily glass of grass fed milk.

I may need to add a bit more to get to the 142 grams a day.  But for now, I clearly have gotten the 1.5 grams per kilogram by adding that 40 grams of whey.

And, since it is the most effective kind of protein that might be all I’ll need.

Whey also has an extra couple of bonuses! 

Branched chain amino acids have been found to build muscle well. Do you need to pay extra for them and take them?  Not if you eat enough whey!  It’s LOADED with them!

Also Mike Matthews has found that when working to lose fat, getting enough of an amino acid called, HMB, helps prevent muscle loss.  You can get an HMB supplement.  Do you need to pay extra for this slightly pricey supplement and take it?  Not if you eat enough whey!  Whey also has enough HMB.

So there you have it!

If you do effective slow rep strength training and include exercises for your lower back and glutes and the rest of your legs and use relatively heavy weights and eat enough protein and include enough whey to do so, you can:

Totally avoid age related muscle loss.

Lose weight ALL of which is fat.


And, you can gain enough muscle to force fat loss by doing that alone!  

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