Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Not-so-great Halloween Candy Debate

Tomorrow is that blessed holiday that allows children (and some adults) to dress up as their favorite ghoul or character and march happily around in public! Just for some icing on top of their cakes, they are also encouraged to visit stranger's homes and ask for sweets! What a great tradition, huh?

With childhood obesity on the steady rise, there has been a push from toy companies to give out toy treats instead of caloric ones. Nutritionists say to avoid dishing out candies and instead give boxes of raisins (which are also sweet like candy, they argue). Now, when I was 5 I would have been very happy to receive a package of Play-Doh! So I am not saying that these suggestions are absurd, don't misunderstand me. But have you ever recieved a box of raisins in your huge bag of loot? Even if you enjoy raisins every other day, it's like finding a cat turd in your bag! It's just AWFUL and they'll get thrown out with the open wrappers and Necco wafers. ugh!

I appreciate that the idea behind the raisins is "have a more healthy holiday, and don't forget that fruit is nature's candy!" But a single box or two of raisins mixed in with 6 pounds of candy bars isn't going to save a child from diabetes. The natural raisin sugar will be digested as a simiple carbohydrate just like the ones in the Twix. No different. The 1/2 oz of fiber found in that box of raisins is also, not likely to help(as in WON'T) balance blood sugar.

So what do you do when you and your conscience are standing in the grocery with a JUMBO mixed bag of candy in one hand and a bag of boxed raisins in the other? My advice is to get the bag of candy. I'm going to be strung up by my nutritionist cohorts, but I'm sticking to my guns on this one. I do not see it as the responsibility of the neighbors to give out healthful treats, not when the goal is to acquire a mountain of garbage, as my mother always put it.

I believe it to be the responsibility of the parents to have rules at home regarding what, how much, and when the loot can be eaten. My brother and I always worked very hard to get as much candy as we could, but then my mother allowed us to only eat a certain amount that night. We would spend more time dividing it all into piles and trading with each other. Over the next few days she kept her eye on it and soon the allure of the candy waned. By Thanksgiving we still had more than half of what we had brought in, and it was by then that we had to throw out the rest. I think she told us that it had gotten too old. Very tricky, way to go Mom!

From this I had learned that it was more fun to dress up and GET the candy than it was to actually eat it all. After one or two bad stints during which I snuck 10 too many pieces and got ill I learned that the dream of the eating all the candy was much nicer than the reality. It's a very important lesson to learn and to carry with you forever!

But that's just MY opinion. If you want raisins you'll have to go next door because I'm giving out chocolate bars.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Have solid, tangible, quantifiable goals.

This past weekend has to have been one of the most beautiful that I have seen in quite some time! The leaves were gorgeous, the air was brisk, the sun warm, the sky crystal clear. I was just a giddy grinning fool all weekend!

Saturday was one of my best friends' wedding. Just stunning! Autumn theme, so we wore truffle brown gowns and carried bouquets of yellow, orange, red flowers and real fallen maple leaves. After the ceremony and all the pictures were taken, the bridal party and groomsmen all went back to our own seperate reception room while all the rest of the guests were enjoying their cocktail hour. The selection of food we were offered made me think about how we are contstantly defending our beliefs.
In this case, what one believes is healthful to eat. But this applies to lots of things. Anyone ever say you were crazy for working out 3 times a week or going grocery shopping every other day?

Sometimes it's very tough to stick to your guns. With mozzarella sticks, fried ravioli, sesame chicken bits, meatballs and spanikopita looking at you it can be difficult. What seems to be MORE difficult to me is having others eating the hors d'ouevres! It's a social cue that eating now is appropriate and for some reason it's easy to feel that if you don't take part it will be misconstrued as rude. Why?! Gotta love cultural and social cues that are embedded in our brains right?

I think that is why it's extremely important to have a real reason for the way you choose to eat, or a real goal in mind. It is easier to avoid the fried ravioli if you know them as health saboteurs that will make you feel sick (too much frying for me, makes me feel ill)then as something that you need to avoid because they'll make you fat. We can all dispell the latter argument easily, "ONE fried ravioli never hurt anyone."

So if your exercise goal is "to lose weight" you need to sharpen that up. How much weight? Think realistically and take muscle gains into account. If your goal is "to eat clean for one month" as a diet jump start then that's a quantifiable goal. That approach would make it easier to avoid that mozzarella stick!

Does this make sense? If you're not really sure what I'm getting at just write me a quick email and let me know what your goal is. I'll give you examples of how to sharpen it up so they can be really achievable! It'd be nice to check those off your to-do list huh?

Monday, October 13, 2008

CrossFit CERTIFCATION COMPLETED!

Happy Monday to you!
I just spent my weekend in Toronto at the CrossFit Certification Seminar. I can say that we all had a great time and learned such an incredible amount! It's all extremely applicable and we also learned how to pass it on to our clients as well as to ourselves. All of us, we're all should always be in a state of improving and active learning right?

Toronto is, from my experience, a tremendously friendly and inviting city. I think I'd go there over NYC if given the choice. I did notice though, how much slimmer overall the population of the city was. I had lunch one day in a mall food court, did some people watching and there was a NOTABLE difference! I got talking to a woman I partnered with in some groups and she said, about a trip she had recently taken to the States, "I was surprised at how many heavy children there were." Not even adults, which she was also surprised by, but more specifically the children were whom shocked her. I agreed. Childhood is a great time to learn skills that we get too afraid to do as we get older: knee swings on the junglegym, cartwheels, tree-climbing etc. We learn that running around and getting sweaty and tired makes us feel good!

Exercise is to make us fitter for our lives. If someone gets winded walking around the grocery store, they aren't fit enough for their life-demands. We learn how our bodies move when we are young; running around the playground and throwing ourselves down hills. That may sound silly but can you skip across the room without putting alot of thought into HOW to skip?

This Certification Seminar weekend involved ALOT of moving. And I had an absolute blast. I'm sore today, but I know it's from having done something good. Let's all work to make sure the youngest generation grows up knowing that active movement brings good things and that being sedentary is just no fun :)

Hugs,
Sweat Angel

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Feel like hibernating?

It's autumn for sure now! A most notable sign of the season is the changing leaves, the cool breezy days (with bright warm sun) and the evenings are downright cold!
So maybe you're feeling the urge to hibernate! I get hit with various autumnal-desires: snuggling with a book under a big blanket letting my nose get a little chilled, cooking hearty stews and apple pies, and napping. I'd be a great bear I think, I know what to do!

But now is a GREAT time to be active OUTDOORS...or start if you haven't been all summer. During the summer it may be hard to motivate yourself to get outside when the humidity has turned the world into a damp sponge. It feels a little icky when it's like that, I can't lie! Autumn in New England is usually pretty dry, cool and breezy though. You won't get the same overheating feeling from going for a hike as you would during the summer, so you may last a little longer on the trail!

One of my favorite parts of Autumn is the trail running! Just like for hiking, it's cooler and dryer so you can go a little bit further or longer. And getting to a special vista can be so rewarding when the trees are all lit up for the season.

A little safety note though, the top two.
Bring WATER with you please. Just because you're not sweating like you would on a 96 degree day doesn't mean you aren't! Rehydrate while you're out exercising ALWAYS!
Also, if you got it alone tell someone where you're heading off to and how long you expect to be out.

If you have a favorite trail that you already hike in the summer, make sure you visit it during the other seasons and see how it changes during the year. You be disappointed! If you DON'T have a favorite, try going to www.mountaintravelguide.com and type in your area and get a recommended listing. You can also hook up with the Appalachian Mountain Club for your local chapter and their recommended hikes. They're a great group of folks and have a lot of hikes to choose from!

I personally enjoy Mianus River Gorge near the Stamford/Bedford, NY border and Pound Ridge Reservation in New York. If you have a recommended hike nearby Stamford, CT, please let us know!

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Browsing through magazines...

You bet, I absolutely adore wandering through the periodicals and browsing the fitness/health magazines. I love reading the articles on how to "lose that last 10lbs" and in the men's magazines how to "add inches to your biceps". (haha yup, I will also read the guy magazines. If you need a giggle ladies, pick one up and look at the ads!) Unfortunately, I don't always agree with their recommendations.

Over the last year or so the mainstream women's magazines have started to pick up on the new trends in fitness. They are incorporating more multii-joint exercises and recommending tougher and shorter workouts. I commend this nod to progression! One particular magazine this month had a workout system that looked pretty good and real...the exercises included a deadlift with push press! So I was impressed at first. THEN I looked at the weight and rep suggestions. It said "use an 8-20 lb bar or weight".
Um...
Do they mean per hand? No! Total! Who is it that they're trying to firm up with that suggestion?

Okay, before I go nuts I'll say that I realize that the company may want to avoid legal issues from all the somebodies out there that don't really know what they're doing and that could get hurt. That's fine. But that's not an excuse to me when next to this mag that's playing it safe you have the men's mag that's saying go as heavy as possible! This just doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Okay, yes there are people out there that this recommendation is a real work out for. That's GREAT if they do this then. But my point is that this magazine says it is geared towards women that are living the fit life. So maybe they should also gear the workouts they suggest to the women that are living the fit life? Just maybe!

They often will have the cardio workouts scaled for beginner up to more fit. They should especially do that for workouts where they're suggesting weights. That way women out there that use these magazines as they're primary source of connection to the world of health and fitness aren't deluded into thinking that a 20lb deadlift is difficult or as heavy as you should ever go. Worse would be having women out there buying this magazine, doing the workouts as prescribed, not seeing results, then getting frustrated and depressed not knowing what else to do. THAT is giving the wrong impression that fitness is only for "other people".

If you see an exercise in a magazine that you'd like to try out and aren't sure how to perform it correctly or what weight YOU should be using, contact me and we'll get you set up right!