Archive for October, 2008
October 29th, 2008
Sometimes, it’s really easy to tell when an exercise has appeal.
That was the case the other day with an exercise called the waist nipper that I found in a recent edition of Self magazine.
I was trying the exercise out to see if I wanted to include it in the routines of some of my female clients when two of my long-time gym friends — Patty and Erma — got a look at it and couldn’t wait to try it themselves.
Here is Self’s description of the exercise:
“Stand with feet wider than hip-width apart, a weight in right hand, arm extended overhead, left hand on hip. Lift right leg to side, bend knee and lean torso to right, bending right elbow as you bring it toward knee. Return to start. Do reps. Switch sides; repeat.”
The movement feels awkward until you get some rhythm going and you might want to consider a fairly light weight until you figure out what your shoulder wants to handle.
Oh, and it has the endorsement of Patty and Erma.
October 27th, 2008
There were snow flakes in that rain Sunday night. Yuck!
Now that we’re well into the months that end in “-ber” (read Brrr), it’s time to start thinking about dressing properly for cold-weather exercise.
Here are a few tips:
Dress in layers – Two or three light layers of clothing — perferably,the layer next to your skin should have wicking properties to carry sweat to the outer layers — are going to insulate your body better than one big, bulky garment. If it’s windy, you want that outer layer to be of a material that will cut the wind without trapping too much heat inside.
 If you’re exerting yourself, you’re still going to sweat and generate additional body heat so you actually want to feel a bit cold before you start. You can figure that it will feel like the temperature is three to six degrees warmer for you for every mile that you run. Wearing too much clothing may be the most common mistake new exercisers make when the weather turns cold.
Pay attention to extremities — If you have dressed your torso correctly, your hands and feet are going to be the most vulnerable to feeling the cold. That’s because blood is being shunted from these extremities to the working muscles, so make sure fingers and toes are covered. Mittens, in most cases, are better for keeping hands warm than gloves.
Cover your head — Studies have shown that most of the body’s heat is lost through the head. As with dressing your torso, think of adequate warmth without smothering the skin’s ability to breathe.
Hoof it safely – If the surface is clear, your regular running shoes should suffice. If you’re brave enough to challenge snow and ice on your runs, you might consider driving short sheet metal screws into the bottoms of your shoes and there are a couple of pull-on traction devices on the market.
Protect your face – The cold, raw temperatures are rough on your skin. You can consider a moisturizer while you’re running or immediately after and there are several styles of breathe-through face masks if you want something fancier than a good old scarf or handkerchief.
Stay hydrated – Again, you’re still sweating when you’re running in cold weather. So, even if you may not feel like it, you’re still dehydrating — colder air is often drier, too — so be sure to drink enough water before and after your run.
Oh yeah, and think spring.
October 24th, 2008
You’d never know to watch me do it, but dancing is one of my favorite forms of exercise.
My wife and I have taken lessons (more or less successfully) all over town, but now we — and you, if you’re a member of the YMCA of Rock River Valley — have a new place to dance. The YMCA’s downtown branch will be holding swing and ballroom dance lessons for seven Friday nights from  Nov. 7 through Dec. 19.
Swing runs from 7 to 8 p.m. and ballroom goes from 8 to 9 p.m.
Lynne Istad, the Y’s adult health and fitness director, is organizing the class and will be among the students, along with her husband Mike. She’s excited to be offering a somewhat different exercise program — especially since dancing can burn up to about 200 calories an hour for a 150-pound person.
“Dance is an awesome exercise and it’s so much fun,” Istad said. “You work on coordination but also body awareness, spacing and posture. It challenges you in a cardiovascular way without having to put on sweatpants and sneakers.”
The classes will be taught by Marla Kols and Paul Marek who, Istad said, “get paid big bucks all over town to teach, so we’re very lucky to have them.”
The cost for the seven-week class is $70 per couple and registration is required. Istad said registration will be available online at www.rockfordymca.org and the Y takes telephone registrations at 815-489-1252.
 Call 815-489-1290 for more information.
October 15th, 2008
Ben Rubendall, a former business editor here at the Register Star, once offered the opinion that people in our newsroom would eat anything.
Actually, what he said was, “You could leave a plate of lightly salted cow chips out in the newsroom and people would eat them.”
I thought of Ben’s assertion when I was covering a story about raw food preparation as part of a healthy eating lifestyle. The subject of the story, Brenda Richter, was kind enough to prepare four dishes — much more than I asked for to be able to write the story — and insisted on offering samples.
I tried some of each dish — a soup with cucumbers, spinach, avocado, cilantro, orange juice, garlic and other spices; a kale salad with raisins and pine nuts; zucchini with marinara sauce, and a flourless chocolate cake — and, while I wasn’t used to all of the combinations, they were dishes I would eat again. But, as someone who went through the CHIP program and who will still follow an all or mostly vegetarian diet once or twice a week, I wasn’t the best test for Brenda’s fare.
I decided that the people Ben Rubendall said would eat anything (their successors anyway) were a far better test. I mean our newsroom actually has a table designated as “the donut desk”, the site of an almost endless succession of cakes, cookies, candies and, yes, the Friday Morning Donut Club’s offerings.
So I put Brenda’s food on the donut desk — it didn’t collapse from the totally foreign fare — and asked samplers to tell me what they thought.
Here are some of the responses:
“Soup: Depite the off-putting Christmas-tree color, the cilantro flavor in the soup triumphs, and it’s got a welcome bit of a zing to it. The consistency is too smooth. Would rather have bit into the cucumbers and avocados, instead of drinking those veggies down.”
“The cake tastes kind of wheat-y at first, but you can tell it’s supposed to be chocolate. The texture was more brownie or torte than cake – but I like it! Any idea what’s in it?”Â
“The veggie was bland. The chocolate cake was OK. I like the zucchini.”
“I vote thumbs up on all but the green soup.”
Now, remember, these are people whose four main food groups are fat, sugar, grease and chips, so I’d say Brenda came off pretty well against a pretty tough audience.
The story comes out next week. Give it a look if you’re interested in getting more veggies in your diet.
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October 9th, 2008
It was kind of like old home week for me a couple of days ago when I covered an event at the Comprehensive Heart Improvement Project (CHIP) office.
I went through the CHIP program for the purpose of writing stories and my health — a heart scan had revealed a serious plaque burden in my arteries a few months earlier — back in 2000 and it was nice to hear the stories of reductions in risks for heart attack, diabetes and other killer diseases again.
CHIP has had great success promoting a vegan diet — I can’t tell you the number of times during the four-week course that I actually dreamed that I was eating a steak, and then there was the time I almost grabbed a concession-stand hamburger out of a guy’s hand while I was covering a Lightning game — so I was surprised and pleased when Dr. Roger Greenlaw, one of the people responsible for bringing CHIP to Rockford, sort of strayed from the program’s straight and narrow during his presentation that day.
“I don’t personally feel that a person has to be vegan to be optimally healthy,” Greenlaw said, “but what I do believe is that we have, on the one extreme, is nachos, cheese and soda as a diet and vegan at the other extreme. People have to go as far as they need to go (between the extremes) to get healthy.”
I liked this idea because, while I don’t adhere strictly to CHIP anymore, I do still try to consume a lot of fruits and vegetables almost every day and most of my favorite recipes are vegetarian — something that makes me less than popular at the Register Star’s holiday potlucks.
The idea also fits in with something we were talking about here during a healthyrockford.com story meeting — which is that, keeping in mind that it’s not a diet but a lifestyle, a person should eat for the way they feel comfortable living.
If they want to eat anything they want when they want it, that’s fine as long as they are willing to live with the consequences, whether that is something as serious as a diminished quality of life or just realizing that they won’t be relishing the onset of swimsuit season. If they want razor-clean arteries, less chance of having a heart attack than the Cubs and White Sox squaring off in a World Series and a trimmer physique, then CHIP has a proven track record along those lines.
But, wherever a person falls between Dr. Greenlaw’s diet extremes, it should be the spot where they are happy.
