Monthly Archives: January 2006

Commenting on a comment from Joe

Joe commented on my last blog titled I’ll scrub your floors and wash your linens. His comment was one I always get no matter how hard I try to be clear. "Don’t you need aerobics for heart health and to lose fat so you don’t have to eat less food?"

It seems the fitness industry has done a better job than I thought of brainwashing folks into believing that heart pumping cardio is necessary on a regular basis lest our ticker will weaken and we’ll become as fat as a cow.

The fitness industry also manages, quite deftly, to side-step and ignore new scientific discoveries. They do so because they don’t want their precious position stands and Romper Room-esque devices ruined and outmoded by ugly, little, annoying, facts.

I must rush off to work right now. Full load of clients. I promise I will return later this afternoon to finish this blog. I’ll post some really interesting stuff.

Suffice it to say for now, there is not a single health benefit that aerobic exercise enhances that strength training cannot bestow as well. Not my opinion dear reader – FACT.

And don’t forget – Dr. Cooper head of the Cooper Institute for Aerobics (now just the Cooper Institute) has said "People over 50 should spend less time on aerobics and more time on strength training." I’ll get into this later on. Stay tuned!

UPDATE: My day was awash with woes and frought with incident. I know I promised but the rest of this post will have to wait till tomorrow. My apologies for those who came back for more. Until tomorrow!

I’ll scrub your floors and hand wash your linens.

FACT: The typical human being has enough body fat on her person to last for tens of thousands of hours of physical activity – perhaps even more.

Even if you had the time and inclination to be active enough for meaningful fat loss to occur, somewhere along the line SNAP! CRACK! or POP! and you’ll be visiting your friendly neighborhood orthopedist for a pow-wow.

The fitness industry has done an excellent job of making us believe that physical activity is the answer to our fat loss/health prayers. Millions have tried it and millions have failed. The amount of heart attacks suffered in the pursuit of preventing one is staggering.

The definition of insanity is:

Doing the same thing over and over again hoping that the outcome will somehow be different.

Last week I had the privilege of attending a rare day long seminar with Seth Godin. A woman at the lecture who had heard of my book spoke to me on a break. She woefully explained that she had started a running program at 45 years old to lose fat and get fit and, over the past several years has been injured 4 times. She has gotten not a jot closer to her goal. I felt for her.

I explained that:

Fat loss is entirely a matter of eating less food specifically less refined sugar/carbohydrates and
Strength training a couple of times a week for 20 minutes per session to preserve and hopefully build muscle and bone while losing fat.

That is it. Really. Like, if you try it and it doesn’t work, I’ll come scrub your floors, hand wash your linens and give you a foot massage like you’ve never experienced (ladies only pending wife’s permission).

This is the secret everyone is searching for but have been bamboozled into disbelieving.

The current worldview for fat loss/health is:

I must be very aerobically physically active and eat little to no fat

The truth is:

Eat less food preferably less carbohydrates and more healthy fat and strength train (lift weights) 2X per week and be only as active as you like mainly for fun.

By the way I’m a neat freak with powerful hands. I urge you all to give my worldview a try. If it doesn’t work…

Cholesterol Facts

I am getting increasingly annoyed at the willy nilly distribution of statins for lowering blood cholesterol. these muscle wasting, nervous system damaging drugs are dangerous and more often than not completely unnecessary. The use of statins is coming under fire and that makes me feel good.

FACT: If you are a man over 45 your chance of getting a heart attack or suffering from heart disease is LOWER when your cholesterol level is 240+.

Read The Cholesterol Myths before you take these drugs. You owe it to yourself and to your beloved family members.

Never Eat Alone

Keith Ferrazzi author of the natioanl bestseller Never Eat Alone is a good man and a wonderful speaker. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing him talk and training him at my gym. His book is a must read for anyone who wishes to improve the quality of their lives.

Her own science

Last summer I gave a lecture for the Live Well NY Fitness trade show at the Jacob Javitz center. As I am wont to do, I focused my lecture on dispelling many myths (and in the fitness industry, almost everything you read is myth!) and trying to re-educate folks so that they can improve their lives through safe and sane strength exercises and eating correctly.

I took out a small booth at the show to sell my wares and meet other health professionals. A few people stopped and chatted but everyone took a free pen. A bunch of people pointed to my book and said "Is that free?" A couple actually just took it and started casually walking away. People sure like free stuff I learned.

As I was policing my products, a woman in great shape stopped, looked at my sign which in part read "The 30 Minute a Week Exercise Solution" and tritely said "I don’t believe it." "You don’t believe what?" I replied. "I don’t believe that 30 minutes a week is enough."

She turned out to be a multi-certified professional trainer, one of those super-instructors you see bouncing all over Manhattan with all sorts of exercise devices strapped to their person. I explained that there is scientific evidence to back up the statement, and that a recent meta-analysis of over 150 peer reviewed and published papers indicates the statement is true. I explained that exercise is a stimulus, not an end in itself, so on and so forth.

For another 20 minutes we discussed many other issues – the dangers of certain exercises, the false premises of certain techniques like Pilates creating long, lean muscles, the dangers and misconceptions of stretching, diet, etc. She disagreed with and, much to my dismay, seemed hauntingly disinterested in everything I was saying. I delivered the science and her disagreement’s continued.

Talking about something diet related I believe, she suddenly paused. Looking at her attractive face her head, it appeared, was expanding – critically overloaded with this new information. She was deeply lost in thought. She then, very slowly started to walk backwards away from the booth, narrowly missing a collision with another attendee. She stopped in the middle of the aisle, peered at me sharply and confidently said "Well, I have my own science." and walked away.

Her own science. Well, it’s a good thing she doesn’t work for NASA.

It contiues to amaze me how many fitness professionals are willing to do what they feel is right even if it flies in the face of science. God help the clients!