A Weighty Issue

Weight is a troubling measurement for those interested in fitness. It is so easy to measure, but it’s not a great indicator of fitness. Many people get hung up on the number on the scale to the detriment of their overall workout routine and fitness progress. I often advise my clients to throw away their scale (I don’t own one) and focus instead on body composition by taking measurements of specific parts of the body or even just noticing how their clothes fit. Doing so gives one a much more accurate understanding of fitness than weight itself.

As a pregnant woman in America, even outside of the traditional medical model of prenatal care, I’m subjected to weighing myself regularly. (I was never weighed when pregnant with my first child; we lived in London at the time.) I can see how obsessive I’ve become about how much weight I’ve gained, both overall and since my last prenatal appointment. This obsession only reaffirms my belief that weight is a misleading fixation when talking about health and wellness. After all, I’m confident that my body will do what it needs to do to grow a healthy baby. And I’m also sure that my healthy lifestyle will help me shed the weight once the baby is born.

There was something incredibly enlightening that happened yesterday regarding my pregnancy weight gain. I had a prenatal appointment, and I learned that I’ve gained 30 pounds in the first 34 weeks of pregnancy. As I talked with my midwife (who felt my weight gain is totally appropriate), I told her that I’m still eating pretty well (although I did admit to my recent brownie cravings), still getting quality exercise, and overall still feeling pretty well. I also told her that I’m starting to feel a bit more tired a bit more quickly. While I know all of this is normal, it’s still disheartening to an active person!

I got home from my appointment to find that my order of new fitness equipment to use with my personal training clients had arrived. One of the items was a 30 pound VersaBar. As I bent down to lift the package off of my porch (using my knees and not my back, of course!), I was shocked at how heavy it felt. I realized that this is the same amount of weight I am carrying around as pregnancy weight; no wonder I’m getting tired more easily!

So while I’m not going to run out and buy a scale and start recording my weight regularly, I do have a greater sense of understanding of those people who find measuring their weight motivating. For me, feeling my heart beat and my lungs expand as I work out is motivating enough.

Good health and great happiness to you.

Sneaky Workout: Stairs

In case you’re new to the onbalance blog or missed my guest blog post on The Work At Home Woman last week about sneaking in exercise while the kids are at the playground, I’ll let you know that this idea of finding bits of time for fitness is central to my well-being and my work.

You won’t be surprise, then, when I found myself with a spare half-hour today between a client appointment and a doctor’s appointment* and knowing that I had a high-intensity workout on the schedule for today, I thought that I could make good use of the time between appointments. I first thought about going for a run, but I was dressed in long pants and had on a regular bra, so running in the already-70 degree-plus weather was not an option. As I pulled into the parking lot, I realized that the building where my appointment was located was several stories tall. Add in the basement, and I had five floors of fitness at my disposal. It was time to do a stair workout.

There are some logistical considerations when choosing to do a stair workout:
First and foremost, make sure that you will be able to reopen the stairwell door once on the inside. I simply asked someone in the hallway to let me out if I couldn’t get the door back open as a test.
Next, walk up a few flights to gently warm up the body. You’ll also find a landing between floors on which to stash your bag so you don’t have to carry it with you or worry that someone will dash off with it.
As you climb the stairs, make sure to step fully on each riser, with as little of the heel hanging off the back of the step as possible. Doing so will prevent seriously sore achilles heels and calves the next day!
While you may want to pump your arms as you ascend the stairs, I strongly suggest holding the handrail as you descend. As your legs get more tired and your heart rate increases, trying to move quickly down the stairs can turn into a disaster if you lose your balance. The handrail can prevent a fall.

There are several ways you can approach doing the stairs as a workout. Certainly, a straightforward single-step-at-a-time method will give you a good workout. To increase the cardio intensity, try jogging up the stairs. Or if you want a strength workout that will also get your heartrate up, ascend the stairs two-at-a-time and then jog single stairs back down to the bottom. You can, of course, mix up these strategies to keep things interesting. Just keep moving!

For those of you who think this is a crazy idea, perhaps you’ll feel better knowing that in the twenty-five minutes I was in the stairwell, not a single other person used the stairs. (Which is, quite possibly, the reason we need lots of multi-story medical buildings….but I digress…..) When I finished my workout, I popped back out into the hallway, found a water fountain for a drink, then went back outside to stretch and cool off for five minutes. At the end of that five minutes, my heart rate was lower but not fully recovered, indicating I got a really good workout in my “downtime.”

Sneaky exercise saves the busy mom once again!

*I now know that despite the awesomeness of this workout, it is ill-advised to do it just before a mammogram. It is very difficult to stand perfectly still and hold one’s breath after such a high-intensity cardio workout. My jello legs were not doing me any favors, either. But onward and squishward went the mammogram machine anyway, and I’m hopeful for a clear report next week.

Five Minutes of Reflection

Need a few minutes to relax? Want to make sure you’re on the healthy track?

Take a deep breath and five minutes to think about:
1. What you have done well today.
2. Your favorite workout you’ve done recently, how it made you feel, and when you plan to do it again.
3. Three people for whom you are grateful.
4. How you will nourish your body to stay healthy.
5. How you will continue to live intentionally, positively, and heathfully through the harried end-of-year rush.

Good health and great happiness to you!

Healthy Women Should Know About Healthy Woman

Last night, I was a guest of the fine women of Sullivan Physical Therapy at the Healthy Woman Anniversary Celebration. Healthy Woman is an outreach program of Cedar Park Regional Medical Center, and from what I saw at the brand new Cedar Park Center last night, they’re on a road to success.

The evening began in the concourse, with about fifty vendor booths set up for the mostly female crowd to browse. The booths represented the wide spectrum of products and services that contribute to women’s wellness: skin care products, jewelers, chiropractors, vitamin options, OB/GYNs, and many others. Some booths had demos, probably the most popular of which was Rachel Garman’s chair massage. There was an excited buzz all about the concourse.

The beautifully-presented dinner portion of the evening featured a fashion show followed by a keynote address by Linda Armstrong Kelly (aka Lance’s Mom.) Her story of being “a self-made Cinderella” emphasized the importance of persistence, hard work, setting goals, and being grateful for success. She also spoke about supporting Lance through his cancer treatments, reminding the crowd that it is each individual’s responsibility to advocate for her own health. It was a fitting way to finish an evening dedicated to women’s wellness needs.

It was both uplifting and reassuring to be in the company of 800+ other women who actively seek to live a life of wellness. I look forward to the next Healthy Woman event. What a fantastic resource they are for Central Texas women.

Log Book vs. Journaling

 

Most fitness resources state the importance of keeping a log of your workouts as a way of maintaining adherance to your fitness program.  While the log book is a useful means of recording the facts of a workout, for most people who struggle with fitness and nutrition emotions play a huge role in success or failure.  As a personal trainer, I often recommend that my clients journal both exercise and eating habits.  The key, however, is not just to write what type of exercise was done or what foods were eaten but to journal about how the activity and the food made you feel.  By connecting the activities to the emotions, you can start to see patterns develop that will help you adhere to your resolutions.

For example, someone may have a strength training routine and the journal entry would read: “really difficult upper body session.  More reps than I have done before.  Thought my arms were going to fall off.  But felt AMAZING and proud of myself afterwards.”  That way, when they know they have another difficult workout to do another time, they have the proof that they can get the work done and feel great about it afterwards.  Similarly, with eating, a habitual fast food eater may write: “caved and got a burger and fries for lunch.  Tasted delicious and salty while I ate it, but that was three hours ago and it’s a rock in my stomach.”  Perhaps that entry will help change habits the next time someone wants to grab a quck but unhealthy lunch.

The other aspect of journaling that I feel positively influences adherance is that it is private account.  I do not review my client’s journals.  The feedback I have received from operating this way is that people feel more free to be truly honest about how their workouts and eating are affecting their lives.  In the end, even though people hire me to help improve their physical fitness, I know that the key to achieving that goal is in making lasting behavioral changes.  Those changes can be made only when confronted with a willingness to admit human faults and the courage to try again.  The journal also becomes a place where patterns of past behavior then translate into future goals.

When fitness and nutrition are understood as components of a wellness journey, the changes that one can make are broader and deeper than ever imagined.

Good health and great happiness to you.

Sun Safety

After my last post about exercising through the heat of summer, I received some first-hand experience in the power of the sun.  For the second time in a month, The Monkey has had a mild case of heat exhaustion. 

We spent a hot and sunny Friday afternoon at a pool with some friends.  We were outside from 12-3, despite knowing full well that those hours are the sun’s strongest.  The Monkey had a fantastic time with his friends, frolicking in the water and playing on the frog slide.  Not unexpectedly, he fell asleep on the drive home.  When he woke up around 4pm, I noticed he was warm.  I didn’t think  much of it, knowing we’d been outside all afternoon. 

When The Monkey wanted to lie down on my lap while he had a little friend over to play that evening, I knew he wasn’t well.  Then I noticed his heart was beating more rapidly than normal and he continued to be lethargic.  His skin didn’t seem sweaty or clammy or out of the ordinary, so I still didn’t think about sun exposure as an explanation.  Later in the evening, he vomited.  But after that, he was cheery and seemed much better.

It was only in recounting the events of the afternoon to The Husband (he was out of town) that we began to piece it all together: a few weeks ago, we had a long family swim in the afternoon.  The Monkey then became lethargic and later vomited.  We know that he’s a sweaty kid by nature.  It seems, though, that he’s more prone to sun exhaustion than other kids, too.

Please check out some sun safety tips and symptoms of suspected heat exhaustion as well as the potentially life-threatening heat stroke.  And do take good care of yourself and your family.

Good Advice

I spent last week riding the Swine Flu Rollercoaster. Between the unending media coverage and the local school closing announcements, there were many who appeared convinced the End was near. And while I certainly do not make light of the illness and the speed with which it can spread, I admittedly chuckled smugly as I read the advice that came home with The Bear from his elementary school:

-Get plenty of sleep.
-Wash your hands frequently.
-Exercise regularly.
-Eat nutritious food.
-Avoid stressful situations.

Haven’t we heard all of this before? I have a mental tape of my mother saying all of those things, pretty much every day for my entire childhood. And although the thought of a new virus sweeping through the world at an alarming rate *is* reason for pause, I find it refreshing that the tips for avoiding falling ill are the same common sense tips that ground a basic sense of wellness. Life is complicated enough; when good advice is simple, I’m grateful.

Good health and great happiness to you.

What am I doing, exactly?

I received an email from a local magazine enquiring if I would like to advertise with them.  “Bikini season is right around the corner!” it reminded me.  It also reminded me how very little I associate “fitness” with “bikinis.”

While having a bod that rocks a bikini is a motivating goal for some people, it’s unrealistic and unnecessary for most.  I approach fitness in a much broader way– pardon the pun– and encourage my clients to do the same.  I think about function: who is the client, and how does she need to move to complete daily tasks?  How can I help her make those tasks easier on her body and allow her to complete them more efficiently?  Are there repetitive motions that she does– either consciously like working at a computer or unconsciously like reaching from the driver’s seat back to hand baby a toy or snack– that can cause injury if the body isn’t working well?  After all, if mama ain’t functional, the family is in trouble.

Functional fitness raises body awareness.  From postural issues to activity cues, the exercises that create a functional fitness plan are simple.  The workout comes in doing them in an appropriate combination, at an appropriate intensity, and for an appropriate number of sets and reps.  Once the exercises and combinations are learned, functional fitness should become integrated into a person’s life and provide long-lasting benefits.  And while it may seem ridiculously banal, having a fit and functional body is actually a gift in and of itself.  It is a key component to achieving a sense of balanced wellness.

If you’re looking to get into a bikini and turn heads on the beach, I can help you achieve that, too.

Under the Weather

January and February are always tough months in Austin– often the weather is gorgeously sunny and warm, yet for those of us who suffer from “Cedar Fever”, these days are nothing more than cruel temptations.

I frequently fall for the Siren song, which leaves me as I am now: sniffling, with watery eyes and a wheezy chest. I am thankful that my allergies are limited to this seasonal inconvenience. Still, for those who have to listen to my croaky voice and for those who rely on me to coach them to a healthier life, I’d really rather not feel this way. And it’s not particularly comforting to know that I don’t suffer alone. It just means there are a lot of us who aren’t enjoying these amazing days.

In the end, allergies can’t keep me inside. It’s just too perfect out there. So if you see me sniffling and coughing through a run, let’s both pretend you didn’t see me wipe my nose on my t-shirt.

Good health and great happiness to you.