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7 minute abs.

May 14, 2013
Food Environment
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I must admit to being somewhat skeptical anytime I hear people tout “Get fit fast” systems.  Seems I am always reminded of Ben Stiller’s interaction with the hitchhiker in “There’s Something About Mary” when the topic comes up.  How low can you go?  Can’t get abs in 6 minutes, has to be 7 minutes.  7minute abs.  Thus I chuckled out loud last week when I saw the latest issue of the American College of Sports Medicine’s Health and Fitness Journal.  Front and center, the 7 minute workout.  I followed the conversation on Twitter and read Gretchen Reynold’s piece in the New York Times’ Magazine this past weekend.  Maybe they’re onto something.

Let me give you some background.  When the ACSM says something, I tend to listen.  Having been a member for over 20 years, this organization is the gold standard in fitness and exercise.  As a group they don’t cry wolf.  At last year’s national conference there were several symposia on this high idea of short, intense workouts.  They made me think.  However, my habits refused to let me change my own routine.  How could shorter workouts replace my longer ones.  No way.  What fun is it to say that I worked out for 20 minutes today?

We’ve known for years that to improve aerobic fitness one must engage in interval training, that is, short, intense bouts interspersed with more moderate bouts.   Think repeats during a track workout.  (Something I never do).  However, the latest data shows that high intensity interval training (HIIT) is not only beneficial for fitness, but has been shown to help with weight control, appetite, blood flow to the heart, and even cardiac arrhythmias.

What last week’s article in the ACSM Health and Fitness Journal demonstrates is something called high intensity circuit training (HICT), in this case using only bodyweight, a chair, and a wall.  Through 12 exercises lasting 30 seconds each, interspersed with 10 seconds of rest between, the researchers have demonstrated “many of the fitness benefits of prolonged endurance training but in much less time.”  The authors state that the intense nature of the activity causes changes at the molecular level of the muscle that mimic those seen in activity of longer duration.

Always being willing to try something before I completely rule it out, I asked my early morning workout buddy if he’d like to give it whirl.  So this morning we wrapped up our cardio session and began.  However, I had to do some pullups before starting, because I like to do pullups.  Routine.  Over the course of 7 minutes we did jumping jacks (first time in years for me), ran in place, did some push ups, step ups, lunges, and planks.  The wall sits made us wince.  Then it was done.  We were both a bit tired, but in some way, refreshed.  My friend said it was the right amount, not too much, not too little.  I enjoyed it as well.

There may have been a pulled hamstring or two along the way, but that’s just age reminding us of our limitations.  Will I stop doing my longer bouts of exercise?  Not yet.  Habits are too hard to break and for years I have been told to engage in 60 minutes per day.  I am still skeptical of how these workouts will impact my bodyweight, but nonetheless, it was something new and I enjoyed it.  I’ll think more about challenging my habits, my routines.

The other thing I don’t understand is that if there are 12 exercises, 30 seconds each, with 10 seconds of rest in between, how do they get 7 minutes?  Seems more like 8 to me.  Nobody said physiologists were good at math.  But we should be.

Two hours.

May 1, 2013
Behavior Change, Exercise, Food Descriptives, Food Environment, Scientific Studies
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The best and most fascinating studies for me are the simple ones.  I don’t want to know the genome of the brain, someone does, but not me.  I want to know why I eat and why I exercise.  More practical and applicable to my daily life than know the DNA of my left parietal lobe.  If indeed I have one of those.

Last week in Boston the annual Experimental Biology Conference took place.  This annual event gathers leaders from a diverse set of fields, including nutrition, to discuss the cutting edges of their disciplines.  I was thrilled that the study entitled, “Menu labels displaying amount of exercise needed to burn calories show benefits” was one that the New York Times chose to highlight earlier this week.  Out of all the amazing research presented, why we eat the way we do and ways to stop it grabbed the headlines.  Progress.

A small provision of the Affordable Health Care Act states that restaurant chains of more than 20 outlets must display the calorie content of their foods.  This is welcome news, however, how many of us know what that number means or even care? Calories in a McDonalds Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese?  750 big ones.  ”Wow, that seems to be quite a few,” we think immediately before taking off a bite.  The issue with calorie counts and nutritional content is that the information is not salient to us, it is not meaningful.  Most know that high calories may want to be avoided, but even that is relative.  Enter the present study.

Researchers at Texas Christian University tracked what people ordered and what they actually consumed as a result of ordering from three different menu options.  The food items listed on the menus were identical with one exception:  one menu simply listed the food, another listed calories next to the food, and the third listed how long one would have to briskly walk if they ordered and consumed each food.  Now we’re talking.  Threaten people with exercise and watch them change their behavior.

When ordering from menus that listed how much brisk walking would be needed to burn off the consumed calories individuals ordered and ate significantly less calories when compared to the other two conditions.  There was no difference in calories ordered or consumed when comparing menus with and without calorie counts.

This isn’t to say that menus with calories listed are meaningless.  To some this information is useful, to others it is simply a moment for pause.  However, exercise is salient, people can relate to walking.  When you see a sirloin steak you want and next to it reads “You will have to walk briskly for 60 minutes” in order to burn those consumed calories behavior seems to change.

Take home message:  if we want to get people to change their behavior around food and exercise, the information we share with them must be relevant.  This information cannot be abstract, like calorie counts.  That Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese?  Go walk for two hours and get back to me.

How long will did I have to walk after I consumed last weekend’s birthday desserts?  Way too long.  And that means something to me.

Kids and Calories

April 17, 2013
Children, Food Environment, Scientific Studies
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Earlier this week the Centers for Disease Control released a news brief detailing a surprising decline in calories consumed by our children.  For boys calorie intake dropped 7% to an average of 2,100 calories per day and for girls, a 4% drop to 1,755 calories per day.  I am not an expert in pediatric nutrition but those calories counts still seemed rather high.

I checked into the CDC data base for Stature-for-age and Weight-for-age percentiles.  You can do the same here:

CDC Stature and Weight for Age Tables

I found the 50th percentile of height and weight for an 8 year old boy.  This yields a 55 lb boy who is about 4’2 in height.  From this data I then tried to determine how  many calories are recommended.  There are numerous sites out there that give calorie data for kids, however, I wanted a reputable one and settled on the Baylor College of Medicine Healthy Eating Calculator.  Baylor is well known for its Children’s Nutrition Research Center.

Entering my 4’2, 55 lb, 8 year old version of myself I was then asked to pick an activity level.  (For a moment I reveled in the idea of being 55 lbs when I was 8.  As far as I can tell, the last time I was 55 lbs was birth.)  I chose a moderate activity level, defined as about 1 hour of activity per day.  At this level of activity, and given the above stats, my 8 year old self was told to consume 1,899 calories per day. Not too far off from the CDC reported average of 2,100 calories per day.  However, the catch is that activity level.  Our kids today are not active.  By choosing less than 1 hour of activity per day, my allotted calories dropped to 1,663 per day, and when I chose not active at all, a mere 1,427 calories was given to me.  Children tend to be more active around the age of 8, however, by the time they are 15 the average child gets 49 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per day, and only 35 minutes on the weekends.

Let’s assume that moderate activity level and take our roughly 1,900 calories.  On average, my 8 year olds self is consuming 2,100 calories.  This represents and imbalance and over time can lead to weight gain.  Habits start young.  We need to help our children make good food choices and encourage them to be active.  Eat less, move more.

Why we run.

April 16, 2013
Food Environment
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My thoughts are with Boston, the running community, and all those impacted by yesterday’s tragic events.  As a friend shared yesterday, “Running is such an innocent sport.”  Her words stick with me this morning.  Why do we run?  We run for health.  We run for quiet.  We run for the solitude and the social.  We run fast.  We run slow.  We run for the silent calm it brings us as our heart and breath pound.  There is something peaceful about running.  Why do we run?  We run for the joy.

That joy was put on hold yesterday as we wrap our minds around the events unfolding at the Boston Marathon.  We will find that joy again.

Saturday Special

March 30, 2013
Behavior Change, Food Environment
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Yesterday proved challenging indeed. The food stared, I ignored. The food screamed, I ignored. The food throw a tantrum, I ate. For the most part I was successful in meeting my challenge of not overeating during my meeting, however, there were moments. In laying out my challenge here yesterday I definitely felt the pressure of not eating so as to avoid having to take a picture and be held accountable. Maybe that is what I should do each day: take pictures of all food consumed. Ignoring the food was a challenge as it literally talks to me. At times it was hard to focus and when others grabbed a snack I wanted to and sometimes did. The power of the environment. So, as promised here is my day in photos (with apologies to size and formatting):

Walking into the conference room I had to giggle, here is the sign on the door:

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Have to love a group of exercise professionals that ignore rules from the get go.

Onward, here is the table as it started its day:

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Noting terribly daunting other than the fact it was simply there.

Onto snack #1, where one of the meeting organizers passed out chocolate covered espresso beans:

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A couple of cups of nuts. Come on, it’s a strength and conditioning meeting, I had to keep up with my colleagues on the protein front:

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Went for a higher healthiness score, banana:

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This brought me to noon, and the table went on steroids. Panera was brought in and laid out before us. Sandwiches, salads, and cookies, galore. I found myself think big, “I’ve been pretty good all morning, therefore I can splurge at lunch. Need to figure out how to combat the thoughts of being good = later binge:

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And my lunch:

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With an extra cook

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The afternoon proved successful with only an apple creeping in to get me. Easy to rationalize that one:

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So there you have it, my meeting food in pictures. The day proved interesting as I felt pretty good about my choices (save the extra cookie at lunch), yet I did find the conversations in my head instructive. By suggesting to myself I met the challenge of ignoring most of the food, I found myself being consumed by thoughts of my rewards. Pun intended.

Happy Saturday. Ten more hours of staring at the table for me.

A challenge for today

March 29, 2013
Food Environment
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Today I will set in a conference with room with seven or eight other fitness professionals. We will go over potential questions for a national certifying exam for personal trainers. We will ask each other to think about this and to consider that. We may even learn something ourselves. Today will be a challenge. Not because I have to sit in a conference room for 9 hours but rather because just three feet from our conference table will sit a cornucopia of food. I will focus on it when I arrive. I will focus on it during. I will look back at it when I leave. The table will consume me.

This table will be filled with nuts, fruit, coffee, soda, chips, and protein bars. Of course protein bars, what do you think those interested in fitness and strength eat? Fruit and nuts? Vegetables? We may all have a dicentra view of healthiness but we all can agree on the importance of protein. And protein bars. Especially protein bars from the company that serves as a sponsor to this organization. I jest.

What I don’t kid about is today’s challenge for me. This is real world eating at its finest. A moment by moment battle will rage inside my head. The food is so close, so easy to grab, even easier to eat. All I will have to do is reach over and unwrap, or scoop as the case may be. I wonder if the organizers of this meeting put thought into why we eat? My guess is no. Too often those of us in the industry simply think everyone eats well and exercises, like them. Eating right and exercising every day? No problem. Hmmmph. Trust me, it’s daily for me. A daily challenge to do what
is good for me. I must push. Push. Push.

I hope that I am able to focus on the task at hand. Food has a way of walling off conversation when I am in its presence. Sure, I’m paying attention but as Mark Zuckerberg said in The Social Network, “You have part of my attention.” Oh dear food, dear sweet, yummy protein bar, my attention is with you as well.

Today I resolve to do better. To do ok. To say no on occasion to the voices in my head. Far too much would be asked of me to ignore the calling of the table yet I challenge myself to do better. Better than I have in the past, if only by one scoop of nuts. Yes, I will do better.

To help me meet my challenge I will take pictures of everything I eat from the table today and will post them here tomorrow. Accountability will be on my side today. I thank you advance.

Happy Friday.

Truthiness

March 28, 2013
Behavior Change, Food Environment
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I love this word, truthiness. Thank you, Mr. Colbert. The word has a certain playfulness to it, some ambiguity that allows for the bending of truth. Ever do that with food or with your weight? I bend it all the time. “Cookies? What cookies? Didn’t even know we had any in the house, couldn’t have eaten them.” Or, in response to my partner’s inquiry of how the scale treated me, “Oh, it wasn’t that bad of a weekend, only a couple of pounds.” Truthiness has afforded me that flexibility.

How about the word “healthiness”? I hadn’t heard that one before yet it jumped out at me when reading a soon to be published study in the journal Appetite. Seems we all judge “healthiness” of food a bit differently, especially if we are focusing on our weight. I love this highlight from the article:

“Consumers’ ideas of weight management (WM) and healthiness are intermingled.”

Without knowing the definition of “healthiness” I would agree. The article summarizes some interesting concepts on how we approach food and I’ve excerpted a paragraph here:

“According to many studies, people are relatively well aware of the principles of healthy eating that support weight management (e.g. Holm, 2003a, Margetts et al., 1997, Niva, 2008 and Paquette, 2005). However, research also shows that putting this knowledge into practice in everyday eating and food choices is problematic. First, health advice and nutrition guidelines may be challenging to reconcile with everyday life with its social and work-related commitments, time constraints, food traditions and taste preferences (Ely et al., 2009 and Holm, 2003a). As Ristovski-Slijepcevic, Chapman, and Beagan (2008) have suggested, people’s ideas of healthy eating draw on various kinds of cultural and traditional, nutritional as well as ethical discourses. Official health advice and nutrition guidelines are only one, albeit important element in this whole. Second, the generic advice is targeted for ‘average’ people and does not easily take into account individual nutritional needs or skills. Third, for non-experts it is challenging to estimate calorie or nutrient contents of foods let alone meals. Studies have shown, for instance, that people easily overestimate the calorie contents of ‘disreputable’ foods with unhealthy images and underestimate the calorie contents of ‘reputable’ foods with healthy images (Oakes, 2005; see also Carels et al., 2006 and Carels et al., 2007). Meanwhile, the market with expanding varieties of foods with differing nutritional contents and increasingly detailed claims on their health benefits, presumes people to be watchful and invariably concerned with nutrition and health aspects of food.”

Yesterday I mentioned the difficulty I have with real world eating. That is to say self-moderating when outside my normal food environment. Good to know that others have a hard time “putting this knowledge (principles of healthy eating) into practice in everyday eating and food choices…” The other pieces that caught my attention in the above paragraph are that people’s ideas of healthy eating come from a diverse array of information and that generic advice doesn’t take into account individual needs or skills as they relate to nutrition. Preach it, Sister Mari!! We overestimate calories of bad foods and underestimate the healthiness of “reputable” foods, like apples? You don’t say? Ever rationalize the energy bar you’re snacking on as meal replacement or say that the pre-made meals and snacks that your weight loss company promotes are good for you? We assign a high degree of healthiness to foods we are told are healthy and that we inherently believe to be healthy. This is a key to why we eat what we do.

People will repeatedly and consistently speak to the negatives of a small amount of high calorie, high fat chocolate while also screaming from on high that 7 cups of cottage cheese are healthy. When, in fact, 7 cups of cottage cheese are way more energy dense than 1 ounce of chocolate. We believe what we are told, we believe what works for us in keeping the “bad” food away, and both lead us to why we eat what we do. Healthiness matters. We just have to get it right.

Based on our own experiences we all ascribe different healthiness values to different foods. When listening to others tells us what to eat that experience gets lost. What to do? What to do about real world eating when faced with foods that I feel lack healthiness? Enjoy in moderation. Don’t have 7 cups of cottage cheese, have one. 6 cookies? Try 2. I just haven’t figured out how to moderate yet. Simply walk away? Easier said than done.

As far as I can tell healthiness may be described as how much I believe a certain food will impact my weight. Based on my individual experience I may think a food to have more healthiness than you. Why do I think a certain food has healthiness and you don’t? Personal experience, advertising, locker room conversations. Why do we eat what we do? Because we believe what we are told in terms of healthiness. Just because Weight Watchers tells us to replace our meals and snacks with their food, doesn’t mean we have to, and it doesn’t mean those choices are healthy.

Just another piece of the puzzle I find fascinating. Inherently we know the principles of healthy eating, yet, as the above excerpt makes clear, we have a difficult time deploying that knowledge. Healthiness is personal. Healthiness is challenging. Healthiness is moment by moment.

Damn, this weight management and food stuff is complicated. I am going try to moderate.

Thanks for letting me ramble.

The Real World

March 27, 2013
Behavior Change, Food Environment
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No, not the world of Puck and Pedro and those other wonderful characters of MTV yore, but rather the real world of eating. And overeating. Upon returning from a wonderful four days visiting my in-laws in Wisconsin, and facing the reality of the scale this morning, my eating environment has hit me square between the eyes.

Over the past weekend we spent time with my partner’s parents. I like to think of us as GDD. That is short for “grandchild delivery devices.” Our daughters love spending time with their grandparents and vice-versa. While Grandma plays endless hours of “gift delivery” with our 5 year old and our 1 year old gets her sea legs, the rest of the adults sheet rock basements, move boats, and chop down trees. Throw in some chicken coop design time and dinner with friends and you have good times. Why then the real world of eating? Let me explain:

I live in a world of organic and home made dinners. Of baking from scratch, CSAs, and gardening. Soon, those chickens for whom the coop has been designed will be added. I do well in this environment, my sweet urges held in check by this place. And I enjoy it. Over the past couple of years I have lost weight and been able to maintain that loss with the help of the environment my partner has created.

And then Reedsburg happens.

Reedsburg, WI. Home of my in-laws. Home to an eating environment which I often crave. And oh, how I change. Cocoa Puffs are purchased and cookie jars stocked for my father-in-law knows me too well. I start munching, inhaling, and changing. I seek out food more often. I find it because its there. I eat it because it’s there. I eat because the rules have changed. My environment changes when we go for a visit and I don’t do well with change in this sense and the scale this morning backs me up. As does the red alert on my fitness app saying I overdid it. Have to love it when your phone tells you to get a clue.

My change is not my in-laws fault or my partner’s. The fault lies with me. This fault reminds me that I am on a journey that won’t end anytime soon. For the most part I have conquered, at least for the moment, my food environment at work and at home. I’ve got the Monday-Friday eating environment down pat. For the moment. I struggle on the weekends, I struggle at my in-laws, I struggle in the real world of eating.

Left to my own devices I will eat. And eat some more. My home and work environments, with some effort, have been adapted to help me be successful in my weight management goals. However, when I am released into the real world I still struggle and I am sure I always will. It is most likely too much to ask of me to go to a friend’s house, be placed in front of crackers and cheese, and say no. Or even say just a bit. I know this about myself. The key for me is to manage that environment. I am still working on that as this weekend past brings into stark relief.

This is the power of our food environments. The power of habits. These two factors conspire against us at times and help us at others. The trick is to swing the pendulum more to the helping side. The environments that we surround ourselves in, with regard to food, dictate our behavior. I can’t change, and don’t want to change, the food environment of Reedsburg, WI. I look forward to it. However, I need to keep moving forward with my change. Next visit, only three cookies after dinner. Only one bowl of Cocoa Puffs for breakfast. I’ll even promise to back off on the ice cream. Well, probably not, but at least I have something to aspire to.

Go to sleep. Pretty please? With sugar on top.

March 19, 2013
Behavior Change, Food Environment, Scientific Studies
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Most nights I walk into our daughter’s room and ask her to lie down and go night-night. She’s 1 and this happens a couple of times per night. She’s a smart one, however, and has now taken to looking at me and then immediately to the door, for she knows if she fusses for just a moment longer mommy will come in. And who doesn’t like a good rock from mommy at 2:00 am?

Sleep is important, as any new parent knows. The effects of sleep deprivation are numerous and varied. My college students are experts. An association between bodyweight and lack of sleep was observed years ago and suggested that adults that get less than 5-6 hours per night and children who get less than 10 hours per night are at heightened risk of weight gain. Seems that even after a few nights of lost sleep your fat cells behave like their twenty years older. As any 40 year old can attest, they’d much rather have the fat cells of a 20 year old. I doubt the reverse is true.

Researchers at the University of Colorado have now demonstrated that just one week of sleep deprivation (defined as five hours per night) leads to immediate weight gain in individuals when compared to those who slept nine hours per night. When they say immediate, they meant it, as in two pounds gained within one week. When the sleep times were reversed (i.e. the five hour people got nine hours and vice-versa) those getting nine hours began to lose some of the weight that was gained. Some.

As is noted in the New York Times piece on the study only 16 subjects were studied and only for two weeks. We need to remember that weight gain is a chronic imbalance and not the function of what we do today. I can see the headlines now: “New weight-loss program tells people to simply sleep!” I bet their won’t be any motivation issues to follow that program. Although the present study was brief (and well developed and controlled, I might add) it serves to be instructive. Some highlights:

Individuals who slept only five hours per night actually raised their metabolism, to the tune of an extra 111 calories per day. However, this was more than compensated for by an increase in consumption.

Sleep deprived individuals also ate significantly more carbohydrates and ate more after dinner than any other time of the day.

The above results were more pronounced in women, who maintained bodyweight during adequate sleep and lost “dietary restraint” during sleep deprivation and gained more weight.  Damn gender bias.

Both of the above research notes point to a behavioral shift, a why we eat moment. Why do college students eat when they stay up late? To help keep them awake and alert. “…to provide energy needed to sustain additional wakefulness” in the researcher’s words. Why do I eat late at night? Because I’m bored, I’m already in the kitchen, and the food is there. This is why I go to bed at 7:00 pm, no late night craving for me. Do you find yourself lingering in the kitchen if you are up late? Why? Go to sleep.

When individuals in the aforementioned study were sleep deprived they consumed 6% more calories compared to when they were allowed to snooze for nine. That’s huge. The caveat here is that during the study individuals were allowed unlimited access to food. Not atypical when thinking of the average American home these days, but definitely setting the participants up for a challenge. Sleep deprive me and give me all the food I want? I’d gain at least two pounds.

The body has an amazing ability to adapt. To both the good and bad. I’d be fascinated at what the body would do if it was sleep deprived for months on end. (Aha, I shall study new parents and their food habits!). My guess is that physiologically it would settle into a new normal, however, our behavior might not. New habits might be developed, a late night snack becomes routine. Over time, chronically speaking, weight gain may follow. Just a thought.

Good night.

Old school

March 18, 2013
Behavior Change, Food Environment
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Last week I sat with a woman who had found my name in a recent magazine article about how to lose weight. Being from St. Paul she asked if we could meet and talk about weight loss. Roughly my mother’s age, she spoke of the times when she had lost weight only to gain it back again. Asking good questions, she spoke of metabolism and menopause, going for walks, and a former boyfriend who told her she’d look great if she lost ten pounds. We can be so cruel at times. As it became apparent that I would offer no magic pill I sensed interest was lost and the conversation ended. Too many conversations end that way. Good questions asked, no answers given, left to our own devices.

In a world that tells us to be thin yet begs us to eat many questions linger on how to best achieve our goals. There are fad diets, the old standbys, and apps a plenty. All promising what has eluded us since we were three. There are ads touting the latest and greatest in personal training, heart rate monitoring, and threshold training. I’m in the field and I have no idea of what half of this means. With the other half I am at a loss to explain how it might possibly work. Easy to see how the woman in my office got confused and hoped that I may provide some clues.

This morning I read an article in the Minneapolis StarTribune that kept my thoughts thinking of the questions I am most often asked. The theme of the article was if you want results, you have to think like a gym rat. Write things down, pay attention to your exercise, plan your workouts. Want to get up in the morning and hit the fitness center? Lay your clothes out the night before. Little things work, and so does exercise and watching what you eat. We can so easily get lost in a world of advice, social media, and our friend who tells us “This is the best program ever.” When it comes down to it diet and exercise do work. We just have to do them. Constantly and consistently.

I wish I could’ve offered the kind woman more advice. We could have talked about emotional eating, why eat, and why we exercise. Yet I have no magic answers for motivation. The most we can hope for is to put ourselves in a position for success and see what happens. For today, back off on the cookies and go for a walk. Tomorrow, walk a bit further. Who knows, if we ditch the apps and heart monitors, a low key approach may just lead us to where we want to go.

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