Eating Disorder Awareness Week

If you are in this business long enough, your calendar becomes littered with heath observances throughout the year. Every health-related association chooses a day, week, or month to be the primary focus of their outreach. There's Hemophilia Awareness Month, National School Breakfast Week, National Poison Prevention Week, and World Kidney Day -- and that's just a sampling of observances in March.

Like just about any other week, this week marks another one of those awareness periods. This one is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, by the National Eating Disorders Association. 

http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/node/687

Normally, this observance would be relegated to back along with poison prevention and kidney health.  That's not to say that they aren't important -- they all are -- but I'd don't see any reason to chime in on all of them.  This time, it did jump out at me.  Here's why.

Fighting Fitness Myths

Last week, news circulated that an article had been published in the New England Journal of Medicine about myths in the world of obesity treatment. The article summarizes seven myths that, it says, haven't been proven. 

The journal article was reported in a number of places including ABC, NBC and others.  One of the many other places it was reported was the British site called Medical News Today.  MNT has slowly become one of my favorite places to get news like this, so I'll use that as my baseline in a moment.

But first, let's take a look at what we should all learn about myths -- particularly those in the fitness and health world:

Setbacks

They can jump out at us any time --- setbacks

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No one and no time of year are immune.  Summer travels, family illness, a stressful time at work, and -- the holiday season.  You are probably getting back into your regular routine now that the holidays are over and I want to make sure your fitness routine is a part of it.

Injury is another possible setback -- and that is the one I'm dealing with right now.

Fit for family

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This weekend, I’m making a trip back home to visit with friends and family.  Among others, I’ll be visiting my 2 (and a half!) year old niece.  The last time I was home, I learned a very valuable lesson -- be careful what workouts you do before visiting a kid that age.  I knew I was going to be away from my gym for a few days, so I squeezed in tougher workouts before I left.  I hit my arms the day before the trip and legs on the morning I flew out of town.

And then there was that first evening with my niece.  Any parent will see this coming...  I sit down on the floor with her.  ---  She runs to the other side of the room: "Uncle Dan, come here!"   (Okay, on second thought maybe it was something like "Unca Dan, comeer!".) I get up and go over there...

Being a fitness role model

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A number of weeks ago, I wrote a post focused on being fit to really enjoy time with family.  I was getting ready for a weekend visiting (among other family members) my two year-old niece.  That weekend was great -- thanks for asking! This time, my legs weren't sore from a tough workout the day before and I could keep up.  And I just couldn't imagine having been held back.

That post was about having the physical ability to keep up with -- and enjoy -- your time with family.  For this one, I want to turn that around.  I want to talk about the impression you give others as you stay -- or don't stay -- physically fit and healthy.

With that visit as my inspiration, I'll focus only on the impression that you have on your own children.  I'll leave the rest to you.

Crazy Hurricane Sandy outside, it's time to relax inside

Once you've made all of your preparations, use this time to relax and decompress. The wild weather outside has shut us down, so you might as accept it and relax. Maybe you can get caught up on some reading or watch that movie you haven't had time for.

Don't worry about sweat, train to look good OUTSIDE the gym

I can't tell you how much I love this picture. Whenever someone tells me that they don't like getting all sweaty, I think of this.

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Most people realize that no one really looks their best in the gym.  But, a lot of people don't realize that looking really good outside the gym requires enough hard work that you can look really sweaty and worn out in the gym.

Now, let's realize that the idea of looking really good means very different things for different people.  For a supermodel, it means looking like the woman on the left.  For a guy in his mid-thirties like me, it's a bit different.  For a woman who wants to keep up with her growing grandchildren, it is something entirely different.  But, still, there is a direct correlation between looking like the girl does on the right to looking as good as she does on the left.  There's a similar pair of photos for each of us, even if we have drastically different goals.  

So, let's dig a little deeper...

Big changes you can make

Fitness magazines are overflowing with lists of little things you can do that will improve your health and fitness.  Those lists are great.  No particular item takes that much time or energy or planning on your part.  You can mix and match the items that are easiest to do and you start to reap the rewards.  The rewards aren't huge, but they're meaningful.

But, let's step back and look at the big changes you can make that will bring you big results.  The downside is this:  these could be meaningful changes to your lifestyle.  They could mean meaningful changes to your approach to the gym or to your day-to-day schedule.  The good news is that, on the surface, the changes are surprisingly simple.  The real complexity comes when it is time to actually make these changes into your lifestyle.  That isn't something you can be guided through in a magazine.  You have to figure that stuff out on your own anyway.  Don't get me wrong, fitness professionals like myself are here to help.  But, you have some heavy lifting to do -- figuratively and literally.  

Articles that imply spot reduction

So, you've probably read a million times by now that you can't spot reduce fat.  Fat is stored by the body wherever it darn well feels and there's nothing you can do about it (other than forcing the body to store less fat overall).  If you want to reduce the fat in your arms, doing only arm exercises won't have a direct impact.

None of this is new to you, right?  So, why does this myth live on?  Is anyone actually trying to claim spot reduction is true?  Well, no, not really.  But, there are a lot of instances that imply spot reduction without being quite as obvious.  To help you spot these, here are some examples.

September is the best time of year to get started!

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Every January, the fitness business sees a big bump as people make their New Year’s resolutions. Then, predictably, the new folks disappear by mid-February.  By June, things slow to the summer snail's pace.  Heck, my workouts had slowed quite a bit too, along with all of my Facebook and blog posts!

Well, it's time to get going again -- time to get back on that horse.  In fact, September is the best time of the year to push your fitness to the next level, not January! 

How to use an RSS reader

I've had a number of people ask me how I find all of the articles that I post to the Facebook Fan page.  Often, when I say that I use my RSS reader, I get a confused look.  So, I decided to set fitness aside for one post (and one post only) to talk about RSS.

The blueprint to better diet: ChooseMyPlate

www.ChooseMyPlate.gov

In June of 2011, the USDA released the newest generation of dietary guidelines for all of us to consider as we eat.  Over the decades that the USDA has provided such guidelines, the basic premise has been remarkably consistent:  eat a variety of healthy foods from basic food groups and keep proportions reasonable.  The presentation of these guidelines have changed over that time, though.  The representation varied wildly from a pinwheel-like thing of 7 food groups to a pyramid. (More on that history if you are so inclined.)  This replacement is the first one of its kind to use a plate.  <gasp!>

This significant stylistic change, even though there aren't any earth-shattering concrete changes underneath it, turns the difficult to use standard into something that we can all use on a daily basis to construct our diet.  In this post, I'll give you an intro into these guidelines and give you my thoughts on how they can be used to improve your diet.