Captain Ahab’s BodyBlog

As I have long believed and studies are now showing that as reported in a recent newspaper article from the Associated Press “Higher fitness levels lower death rates in men.”
According to the article the more fit you are, the longer you are likely to live, according to the study on U.S. veterans followed for an average of 8 years by the Veterans Affairs.
They found that “highly fit” men in the study had half the risk of death as those that were less fit. Being “very highly fit” cut the risk even more - by 70 per cent.
The research builds on what is already known about the benefits of exercise and fills in some gaps by addressing the effects of fitness in African Americans.
“A little bit of exercise goes a long way,” says Peter Kokkinos, lead author of the study. “Thirty minutes a day, five days a week of brisk walking is likely to reduce the risk of mortality by 50 per cent_____if not more.”
To determine the fitness level of the veterans a treadmill test was used and the men – who had an average age of 60 – were put into four categories ranging from “low fit” to “very highly fit.”
With over 15,600 participants, the researchers said the study was the largest to look at the link between fitness and mortality. The study also sets itself apart by looking at how exercise affects African Americans, whose death rates are higher than whites. About 43 per cent of the veterans in the study were African Americans.
 
 

A revision of an earlier blog: 

1.       Switch from whole milk to skim milk products. If you consume 3 servings you can save 200 calories a day, which is approx. 20 lbs over the year. 

2.       Reduce butter or margarine usage. Use unsweetened applesauce in recipes instead of oil. Try fat free butter-flavored spreads. Eliminating one pat of butter on your morning toast will allow you to drop 10 lbs in a year. 

3.       Let your soups, gravies and stews chill, then skim the off fat that floats to the surface. You can save up to 100 calories per serving. 

4.       Use extra lean ground beef instead of regular or lean. Try ground chicken or turkey in your recipes. Use Canadian bacon rather than your regular bacon. Trim off all the fat from your meat before cooking. 

5.       Cut the cheese. Replace the 1-½ ounces of cheddar in your sandwich with 1 ounce of non-fat mozzarella and lose 11 pounds a year. 

6.       If you have microwave popcorn every night switch over to the light kind and save enough fat and calories to lose 10 pounds in a year. 

7.       Replace regular bottled salad dressing (which has about 150 calories for every 2 tablespoons) with an equal portion of fat-free dressing (about 40 calories) and save over 100 calories per serving. 

8.       Cut back on egg yolks. Use egg whites or egg substitutes. In most recipes use two egg whites instead of one whole egg. 

9.       Switch from 100 plus calorie sandwich bread to light whole wheat bread. Save 100 calories per sandwich and get the benefit of whole grains.

10. Last but not least : Eliminate your daily specialty coffee. Switching from a 16 ounce cappuccino to regular coffee with artificial sweetener can save you well over 10 lbs a year. 

These 5 dieting mistakes can slow us down or stop us dead in our tracks.

If we are making an honest effort to lose weight and in doing so are trying to eat a healthy balanced diet but are still having trouble or are being frustrated by a stubborn scale the difficulty might lie with one or more of these common problems.

Not Getting Enough Sleep

Many of us are unaware that sleep is a very important part of our weight loss regime. If we want to lose weight and have a healthy lifestyle we should be aiming for 7 to 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep each and every night. During sleep our body repairs and rejuvenates itself and if we deprive it of sleep we may well feel sluggish and unmotivated the next day. Lack of sleep often leads to a slower metabolism, which means we are burning fewer calories and thus slowing our weight loss progress.

Skipping Meals

Going more than 3 to 4 waking hours between meals causes our blood sugar to bottom out and may leave us feeling weak, tired and irritable. Eating more often (every 2 ½ to 3 hours) often helps regulate blood sugar levels, revs and keeps up our metabolism and our body burning calories rather than storing them as fat.

Nighttime Snacking

Many of us have this habit, which undermines weight loss because the foods we eat after dinner are often full of fat and consumed while we are watching TV or doing other activities that increase the risk of mindless overeating. Going to bed with a full stomach can also affect our quality of sleep because our body is kept busy digesting. Limit our snack(s) to healthy, hi protein, low carb, low calorie ones early in the evening that will not cause us to overstep our daily calorie consumption.

 Drinking Alcohol
Weight loss can be prevented by drinking alcohol for 2 key reasons; 1) the excess calories we are consuming. Having 2 or 3 drinks can add hundreds of extra (empty) calories to our daily total. 2) Alcohol stops our body from burning fat. Alcohol and fat are both processed in our liver and when the liver is busy processing alcohol it cannot effectively process fat.
Alcohol also reduces the absorption of Vitamins A, D, E, K, folate, B1 and B2.
Last but definitely not least…

Setting Unrealistic Goals

A commonly made mistake many, many of us make when setting out on our body transformation or weight loss journey is trying to do everything at once. We must remember that we did not gain all of our weight overnight and it is unrealistic to expect that we will lose it right away. We should all strive to set small, realistic and attainable goals for ourselves. If we set hard to achieve, unrealistic goals we are susceptible to frustration when we do not see immediate progress, and quite often our motivation will falter and we will soon slip back into our old habits, especially if we have taken the “all or nothing” approach.

My blog yesterday was about how a glass or two of our favorite wine or spirits could not only relax us but also be beneficial to our overall health and longevity and so I thought that today I would show the calorie content of a number of various wines. Since I live in what is often referred to as the “Napa Valley of the North,” I thought that it would be fitting to show the low amount of calories that are in each glass of wine so that when we are sitting back enjoying a glass we are not overly concerned about going off the fitness track. For those that are counting, all of these are the number of calories in a 4-ounce glass and are courtesy of an article written by freelance writer and wine aficionado Dawn Antle. Enjoy!
Beaujolais                     95
Bordeaux, red               95
Burgundy, red               95
Burgundy, white            90
Cabernet Sauvignon      90
Chablis                       
  85
Champagne, dry           105
Champagne, pink          100
Chardonnay                   90
Chianti                          100
Merlot                           95
Muscatel                      160
Port ruby                      185
Port white                     170
Reisling                         90
Rhone                           95
Rose                             95
Sangria                       
   115
Sauvignon Blanc            80
Zinfandel, red                90
Zinfandel, white             80
                      
 
 
           
           
 

 What I had believed to be true and had been advocating for a number of years has been verified in a report released recently.
Out of London England comes the publication of a Danish study showing that drinking in moderation is healthy and exercise is healthy and combining them is even healthier.
People who neither drink nor exercise have a 30-to-49 percent higher risk of heart disease than people who do one or both of the activities, reported the researchers in the European Heart Journal.
The main finding is “there seems to be an additional beneficial effect of drinking one or two drinks a day and doing at least moderate physical activity,” said Morten Gronbaek of the University Of Southern Denmark who led the study. The study indicated that a glass or two of wine or your favorite alcohol straight or over rocks rather than mixed with sodas is the preferred way to go and does not put you in danger of ingesting a lot of sugar and spoiling your fitness routine.
After watching my wife go through and continually put up with the pain from Lupus and Fibromyalgia and seeing her ingest the prescribed medication, which seemed to have little if any effect I asked “why don’t you have a drink,” meaning a glass of wine or port which she enjoys and after convincing her that it would not be detrimental to her quest for fitness she consented. Low and behold if she didn’t start seeing a bit of relief from her headaches and her joint aches. I have believed and personally known for some time now that a glass or two of my favorite liquor does nothing untoward regarding maintaining good physical condition and in fact seems to take some of the stresses away after a hard workout and ease some of my physical pain.
I am not advocating downing a gallon or so of Thunderbird wine or a quart of Vodka but rather a drink or two over the course of the evening, which is something I have long believed can have very beneficial results.

1. Switch from whole milk products to skim milk products. If you have 3 servings you can save 200 calories a day, which is approx. 20 lbs over the year.
   
2. Reduce butter or margarine usage. Use unsweetened applesauce in recipes instead of oil. Try fat free butter-flavored spreads. Just eliminating a pat of butter on your morning toast will allow you to drop 10 lbs in a year.
   
3. Let your soups, gravies and stews chill, then skim off the fat that floats to the surface. You can save up to 100 calories a serving.
   
4. Use extra lean ground beef instead of regular or lean. Try ground chicken or turkey in your recipes. Use Canadian bacon instead of your regular bacon. Trim off all the fat from your meat before cooking.
   
5. Cut the cheese. Replace the 1-½ ounces of cheddar in your sandwich with one ounce of non-fat mozzarella and lose 11 pounds in a year.
   
6. If you eat microwave popcorn every night switch to the light kind and save enough fat and calories to lose 10 pounds in a year.
   
7. Replace regular bottled salad dressing (which has about 150 calories for every 2 tablespoons) with an equal portion of fat-free dressing (about 40 calories) and save over 100 calories per serving.
   
8. Cut back on egg yolks. Use egg whites or egg substitutes. In most recipes use two egg whites instead of one whole egg.
   
9. Switch from 100 plus calorie sandwich bread to light whole wheat bread. Save 100 calories per sandwich and get the benefit of whole grains.
   
10. Eliminate your daily specialty coffee. Switching from a 16 ounce cappuccino to regular coffee with artificial sweetener can save you well over 10 lbs in a year. 
    

 It’s important that we have a plan for getting back on track and making sure that we don’t view a slip up as a complete failure. Studies show that 58% of those who did stick to their New Year’s resolutions and achieved their desired goals slipped up at least once in the month of January.
We need to make sure that we set measurable and attainable goals, in fact the more specific we can be, the better. For example if someone has decided that weight loss is their New Year’s resolution and decides losing 50 lbs is their goal, then rather than see it as one big goal they should set a bunch of easily attainable 5 lb or 10 lb goals. Start with losing 5 lb in the month of January. This could be followed by 10 lbs in February and so on until the desired goal is achieved.
If by chance during the month of January you had a moment of weakness and ate “that entire tub of ice cream,” don’t say that you have failed and quit. Look at it for what it was…a MOMEMT of weakness, and resolve to try and stay focused and to find the strength not to give in to that temptation again and continue on. If you slip up again, resolve to focus even harder and try to be stronger. Do not let one or two little slip-ups ruin what could be a fantastic experience.
As the person progresses and succeeds then a monthly reward could be in order. I hate using food as a reward so going out for a big celebration dinner is not a good idea but giving yourself a gift certificate from your favorite clothing store would be a great idea, especially given the fact that after losing the 50 lbs the person is going to need a new wardrobe and what better way to get started than have a number of gift certificates already built up and in the bank so to speak.
Believing in your own ability to make the desired changes can at times be difficult, so what I encourage people to do is to emulate people who climb tall mountains like Mt. Everest and how they go about it in stages. These professional climbers do not get to the top in one single climb, but rather they do it over a number of days and weeks and it’s the same with fitness. Anything to do with fitness be it weight loss, weight gain or getting more definition is something that will take time but the end results are well worth the effort. I hope that you enjoy your journey and I look forward to seeing you “at the top.”

Almost all of us have either made or are in the process of making our 2008 New Year’s resolutions and I decided to add a few tips on what we can do to help achieve them.
 
1)      Stick to just one or two resolutions rather than an overwhelming shopping list of things.
2)      Make sure that your goals or resolutions are reasonable. Give yourself a fighting chance by deciding on things that you are able to achieve.
3)      Even if you had previously failed, make sure to tell yourself that, that was then and this is now and you are capable of achieving almost anything you make your mind up to do.
4)      Be specific. Not to just cut back on desserts or alcohol write down how much you are going to have or not have per week.
5)      Plan for struggles to arise and develop a strategy for dealing with these complications.
6)      Break your goal into easily achievable steps or levels. Rather than looking at Mt. Everest and thinking what a huge undertaking it is going to be to get to the top, look at the first level and concentrate on how you are going to get to there. Once there, look at the next level and so on. No one gets to the top of Mount Everest in one single climb.
7)      Reward yourself as you accomplish each of your goals (but not with food). Celebrate your victories and treat yourself to something you enjoy, but if your goal is weight loss strive not to make it food as that may end up compounding the problem. I suggest giving yourself gift certificates to your favorite clothing store so that at the end of your body transformation you have a nice little sum already built up to start your new wardrobe with.
8)      Tell a friend or relative of your goal and try and utilize this person not only as a support system but so that you feel and are held accountable and tell them how you are doing at regular times.
9)      If you stumble, trip or even fall flat on your face…get right back up and on with the program. Don’t be too proud to say that you stumbled and ate the whole tub of ice cream, but don’t let that one event ruin all of your hard work and cause you to give up. It is but a moment in time and not the end of the world.
10)  Once you are able to achieve your goal(s) try and maintain your new attitude or practices that got you there and center out and eliminate any old habits that you found detrimental. Utilize this success as a confidence boost and set your sights on your next goal with renewed self-assurance.
11)  Please, once you do achieve your goal(s) please give of yourself and support someone else who is trying to achieve his or her goal. We can all use an extra person or two in our corner from time to time.