December 3rd, 2008 06:44pm
Mike DeDoncker
It looks like we’re back into last winter’s pattern of snow every couple of days, which means we’re going to be getting extra lifting workouts with the old snow shovel.
The usual advice when shoveling is to not lift big, heavy loads of snow at one time and to make sure when you are lifting that you bend at the knees and not from your lower back. Still, it’s pretty hard to avoid stiffness in the lower back after the first round of shoveling, so here are a couple of exercises to help loosen things up again:
The first is a long-time favorite of mine and I remember, when I first read about it way back when, that a doctor quoted in the article said something to the effect that if everyone did this exercise for one minute a day, he would lose half of his lower back pain patients.
Start the exercise by lying face up with the right leg straight while holding the left toward your chest with one hand on top of the knee and the other under the hamstring. Pull the left leg gently until you feel a slight stretch in the hamstring. Then place your left hand on the floor at shoulder height and, keeping both shoulders on the floor as much as possible, use your right hand to gently pull the left knee to the right. Look back at your left hand while you do this. Hold for 20 to 30 seconds, release and return to starting position. Repeat with the left leg straight and switch direction to pull the right leg to the left while you look back at your right hand.
The second exercise is simply called a “pretzel” and I like it because you are using one set of your own muscles to stretch another set. It’s mostly a stretch for the iliotibial band on the side of the upper leg, but I always include it when my back is feeling a bit sore.
Again, start by lying on your back. Place one foot flat on the floor and cross the ankle of the other leg over the knee. Pull both legs gently toward your chest by lifting the foot off the floor.
Try not to overdo the shoveling and think spring.
November 19th, 2008 06:42pm
Mike DeDoncker
I’ve recently become a fan of audio-book adaptations of novels by James Patterson.
In one of them — it might be Roses are Red — he quotes a character as saying something to the effect that the properly prepared white meat of a turkey is too good to be enjoyed only twice a year. I agree and here are some facts about that bird you’re about to dig into on Thursday.
Four ounces of turkey — a serving slightly larger than a deck of cards — has about 214 calories and provides about 65 percent of the recommended daily value for protein with about half the saturated fat of red meat. It’s also a good source of selenium, niacin, vitamin B6 and phosphorous.
It’s also an excellent source of tryptophan, which other than overstuffing yourself, may explain why Thanksgiving dinner makes you sleepy.
Enjoy.
November 1st, 2008 12:01pm
Mike DeDoncker
Partly because they have what must be the best public relations plan in the universe, it was pretty hard to miss that October was National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Of course, it was also American Pharmacy, Health Literacy, Dental Hygiene, Vegetarian Awareness and 13 other health-related awareness months.
November is, for the sake of making a point, 12 different kinds of health awareness months but two of the biggies — Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness and American Diabetes Awareness — have something very much in common. That would be more and more evidence that they are tied in with increased obesity.
Tips for avoiding both diseases are practically identical. They include eating plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, particularly greens and orange vegetables; avoiding saturated and trans fats; eating foods high in Omega-3 oils; eating more whole grains and legumes, and avoiding too much sugar, among other things.
At least for this month, then, maybe you could think about cutting back to avoid these diseases.
Cutting 250 calories per day (the equivalent of a couple of cookies, a bagel or one and a half cans of sugared soda) out of your diet per day would save 1,750 calories per week. Add a brisk half-hour walk to burn about another 250 calories per day and you could be looking at a four-pound weight loss by the time December rolls around. Â
October 29th, 2008 02:50pm
Mike DeDoncker
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 01:44pm
Mike DeDoncker
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 03:46pm
Mike DeDoncker
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 04:43pm
Mike DeDoncker
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.
  Â
October 9th, 2008 01:45pm
Mike DeDoncker
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.
September 23rd, 2008 12:54pm
Mike DeDoncker
It’s the first full day of fall, a time of year I like a lot more now that I no longer live on a three-quarter acre lot crowded with mature oaks and elms.
The motion of raking leaves isn’t very different from the push-pulls you would perform if you were doing a chest and lats workout in the gym. In addition, a pile of leaves, especially wet ones, can be surprisingly heavy so some warm-up stretches might be in order to keep falling leaves from dropping you on the doctor’s doorstep.
Start by slowly rotating your shoulders in a windmilling fashion, kind of like an old-time pitcher winding up or one of those flying duck yard ornaments. Rotate in both directions. Follow this up by reaching across your chest — right hand as far across to the left as you can, left hand as far as possible to the right.
Stretch your hamstrings and lower back by placing one foot against a low step, keeping the knee straight but not locked out and reaching forward to touch the toe, if possible. Switch feet and repeat.
If you’re going to be lifting heavy loads, you should squat down — not bend over at the waist — bring the load as close to you as necessary to get a good grip on it and then stand up with the load.
Pay attention to keeping yourself safe and a weekend on the lawn shouldn’t leave you aching when you return to the desk job on Monday morning.
September 19th, 2008 11:16am
Mike DeDoncker
Rockford runners and cyclists are fortunate to have a pretty good system of recreation paths that provide them with limited exposure to vehicular traffic while they exercise.
But, as daylight gets shorter again, more of our runs and rides — not to mention bicycle commutes to work — are going to be done in the dark. So it’s a good idea to give drivers at least an even shot at seeing us before we become a hood ornament.
Get lit — Light up your workout with reflective clothing — virtually every major manufacturer makes it — front and back. You could also pin cheap reflectors that you can get at any hardward store to your workout gear. If nothing else, wear white or light-colored clothing or you could carry a small flashlight. I noticed a cyclist wearing a clip-on light on his headgear this morning.
Be appropriate for traffic — Pedestrians are supposed to face oncoming traffic, so run in the left lane facing the cars. Cyclists are subject to the Illinois Rules of the Road, the same as an automobile, and should ride on the right.
Can the music — I like my iPod, but if I’m running in the dark in a place where I need to be alert for cars, it stays on the charger. Yours should too.
Find a partner — Not only is having a partner good for motivation when dark also means cold and nasty, but it means an extra pair of eyes to keep alert for traffic.
The Rockford Road Runners circuit already has two races devoted to the memories of former members who were hit by cars. They don’t need a third.
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