Fit Living

"I DON'T exercise because I don't have the time or energy." This is the most common explanation people offer when asked why they don't exercise. However, this is not a valid excuse. If you don't exercise because you feel you don't have extra time or energy, you have it exactly backwards: The fact is, you don't have extra time or energy because you don't exercise!

One of the main benefits of exercise is that it makes it easier to get through your busy day by improving your body's functioning efficiency, and by increasing your energy and strength reserves. The effect of a good exercise program is that you should be able to accomplish more tasks in less time with more reserve energy left over. How does exercise accomplish this?

First, you must realize that exercise by itself will do you little good, and may actually harm you, if its intensity level is not progressively regulated to your current condition. Additionally, exercise must be combined with a proper amount of rest and recuperation along with a good diet in order to build strength and energy reserves.

It may seem paradoxical, but although one feels awakened and renewed with energy while performing exercise, one is actually becoming weaker in the process of using up stored energy, like an active battery gradually being drained of it's electrical charge. In other words, we are getting weaker the more we expend our energy on activity, even though we feel stronger. On the other hand, this process is reversed when we rest and restore our energy. We may feel tired and lethargic due to inactivity, but we are actually getting stronger in the process, like recharging a battery.

Exercise uses up energy and eventually leaves you fatigued. It is the recover of energy during rest periods following exercise that gradually builds up your energy reserves to higher levels.

Instead of recuperating energy with adequate amounts of rest, many people neglect rest and resort to using stimulates like caffeine and other drugs to increase their energy levels. But, the idea that these stimulants actually add energy to your body is an illusion. You may whip a tired horse to make it respond energetically, but the whip does not provide energy to the horse. The whip merely causes the horse to drain what little energy remains in it's storage. This applies similarly to people who use stimulants to drag themselves through their day. They are simply draining what little energy they have left in storage. A better solution is for people to increase their energy reserves by using exercise and adequate amounts of rest.

In addition to building your energy reserves, exercise also increases your body's functioning efficiency, allowing you to perform your daily chores without working beyond your physical capacity. Without exercise, the limit of your body's physical capacity would remain at the level of your usual activity level. What's wrong with that? Well, as soon as you extend yourself beyond your usual limit with one little extra twist or turn, or by attempting an extra task, problems begin.

Working beyond one's physical capacity brings on a host of health problems, ranging from stress to overuse syndrome. Let's illustrate how exercise protects you from these problems by increasing your physical capacity.

We will use the analogy of a car. If a car's engine is only capable of running at 60-mph, and you push it to run at 61-mph, your car is in for a breakdown. However, if you were able to increase your car's engine capacity to run up to 100-mph, then running it at 61-mph, 71-mph, or 81-mph would present no problem. You would arrive at your destination sooner and your car would still be in good shape. (Please obey posted speed limits!)

Building up your physical capacity with a good exercise program accomplishes the same thing. It increases your physical capacity to perform more work, which ensures that you can easily perform your usual activities without stress or strain, and it leaves you with plenty of strength left over to increase your productivity.

Bacon and cheesecake can alter the brain in ways similar to heroin and cocaine, according to scientists who say they have found the most compelling proof yet that high-fat foods rewire the brain and drive the development of compulsive eating.

When rats raised on regular chow were suddenly given unrestricted access to a high-fat diet, they lost complete control over their eating. Not even mild foot shocks kept them from compulsively feasting on chocolate bars, cream-stuffed cakes, sausage, frosting and other highly palatable human foods. Within 40 days, their body weight had increased 25%.

The rats not only got fat, they also showed addiction-like changes in brain reward circuits -- the same changes that have been reported in humans addicted to drugs.

Specifically, the obese rats showed lower levels of a receptor in the brain called the dopamine D2 receptor. The D2 receptor responds to dopamine, the chemical associated with feelings of reward. The brain releases bursts of dopamine when we eat food that tastes good.

The more junk food the rats ate, the more they overloaded the brain's reward circuitries until they essentially crashed. As the pleasure centers in the brain became more and more blase, and less responsive, the rats quickly turned into compulsive overeaters. They were motivated to keep eating to get their fix.

"They're in a state of reward deficit, so that they're now even more motivated to obtain rewarding food, perpetuating this vicious cycle even further," said study co-author Paul Kenny, an associate professor at Scripps Research Institute in Florida.

The lowered D2 receptor levels -- a side effect of overeating high-fat food -- also seemed to drive the animals to develop "habitual" feeding behaviors that made them "less able to shift their dietary preferences," Dr. Kenny says.

When the researchers took the high-fat foods away, leaving only the healthy, but boring chow -- what the scientists dubbed the "salad bar option" -- the rodents essentially voluntarily starved themselves.

"They liked the junk food so much they would rather starve than shift onto the regular chow," Dr. Kenny said. Even after two weeks of having no junk food, "they still hadn't returned to the level of intake that you see in the control animals for the standard chow. That goes to show just how powerful this food was."

When they artificially knocked down the dopamine receptor using a special virus, nothing happened when rats were given regular chow. They didn't become compulsive in any way, Dr. Kenny said. "Their brain reward systems looked fine.

"But the second you gave it palatable food, it showed very rapidly these addiction-like changes."

Some people may be born with a predisposition to have lower D2 levels.

"That may be why they're more likely to gain weight. They're already halfway down that road, if you will," Dr. Kenny said.

The findings, published on Sunday in an advance online edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience, could have profound implications for the millions of Canadians struggling to control their eating.

"What this is telling you is that, if you persist in eating food that you know is bad for you, there is a chance that you will develop a habit, and you will keep on going back to that food unless you make a really strong, conscious effort to stop it," Dr. Kenny said.

"It's incumbent upon people to make sure that they're more respectful and aware of what they're eating. Just be aware that there are dangers and risks associated. Enjoy (high-fat) food but make sure it's occasionally and very-well controlled. Don't overindulge repeatedly, because there could be repercussions."

Dr. Valerie Taylor, an assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at McMaster University in Hamilton, said the study is a validation "that some people are simply more vulnerable to the whole concept of being addicted to food."

"The fact that we're now in this high-temptation environment further serves to exacerbate that."

Dr. Taylor said the study provides "very strong evidence supporting what a lot of us who work in the field have seen clinically -- that, for some people, it's more than just simply willpower. There's something else going on."

According to the latest estimates from Statistics Canada, 37% of the adult population age 20 to 69 -- 7.9 million people -- are overweight. Another 24% -- 5.3 million -- are obese.

The new study is part of a growing body of research into the "hedonic mechanisms" contributing to obesity. The preliminary findings captured headlines in October when an abstract presented at a neuroscience meeting in Chicago reported that junk food binge eating is hard to stop.

The final report goes further, and explains just what's happening in the brain.

Three groups of rats were studied. In addition to unlimited access to their regular chow, one group was given one hour of access a day to the junk food, while another group had 18 to 23 hours of access each day, for 40 consecutive days.

Rats that had one hour access to the junk food binge-ate, gorging on the food during those one-hour sessions, so much so that they consumed almost two-thirds of their daily calories in that one-hour session. "But they didn't gain weight, and they didn't show those addiction-like changes," Dr. Kenny said.

Rats given unlimited access to the sausages, frostings and cakes didn't binge or gorge, but they snacked all day. They kept eating, consuming twice as many calories as the "control" rats, even when the flashing cue light came on that was paired with a foot shock.

"Many drug addicts know that what they're doing is bad -- they're damaging their health, their finances, their family. But they find it very difficult to stop -- the behavior is almost beyond their control," Dr. Kenny said.

"The same thing happened here: The animals kept on eating, even when there was something in the environment that said something bad was going to happen. They simply ignored it, and they just kept on eating."

Dr. Kenny said treatments known to work for drug addictions may be effective for people who overeat junk food.

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=2737117#ixzz0jZ0fAo9z
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Despite secondary causes that may influence one’s weight, such as genetics, hormones and social factors like our abundant food supply and labor-saving devices, there is still only one primary cause of obesity. One can only gain bodyweight when one’s calorie intake exceeds one’s calorie expenditures.

No matter how much you exercise or how carefully you watch what you eat, unless the total amount of calories you eat each day is less than the total number of calories your body burns each day, you will never lose weight. More importantly, unless the total amount of calories you eat is exactly the same as the number of calories your body burns each day, you will never keep the weight off. Therefore, strategies to prevent obesity must allow people to properly balance the amount of calories they eat and burn each day. How is this done?

Most people struggle to balance their calorie intake and expenditures by feel alone. Perhaps they try to cutback their favorite foods and attempt some exercise. But, eventually they find themselves feeling too tired and hungry, and so they quit. If people could successfully manage their weight by feel alone, they wouldn’t have a weight problem in the first place.

There is a saying in the scientific community, "You can’t manage what you don’t measure." This applies equally as well to balancing and managing one’s calorie intake and expenditures. Studies have shown that people who do not measure their calorie intake and expenditures are poor at correcting guessing these amounts. Imagine the disastrous results if you attempted to manage your bank account by incorrectly guessing your account deposits and withdrawals. Why attempt to manage your weight this way?

Unfortunately, the multi-billion dollar diet industry discourages people from adopting the procedures to properly measure and modify their calorie intake and expenditures. Quick fixes such as unhealthy diets, drugs, supplements, surgery and strenuous exercise programs are offered as substitutes for legitimate weight management skills. But, these quick fixes only produce temporary effects because they do not result in permanent lifestyle changes. One immediately returns to old habits as soon as one’s quick-fix diet is over.

Properly measuring and balancing your calorie intake and expenditures allows you to modify your lifestyle at a comfortably manageable rate until your modifications become new lifestyle habits. You can include all of your favorite foods as part of a well-balanced calorie-controlled diet. You can engage in any activity you enjoy, no matter how insignificant the amount or intensity—the calorie expenditures all add up. Finally, you can trim down body fat at a safe and comfortable rate, and keep it within an acceptable range. Following the correct numbers gives you the ultimate power and flexibility when managing your weight.

Congratulations - You have lost weight and you have lost inches and you reward yourself with a "treat" of junk food.

Within a day or two of loading up on a conventional diet you are shocked to discover your waist has increased by more than half an inch, indicating you regained two pounds of body fat! But, you think, although you ate heavier, there's no way you overate enough to account for a gain of two pounds of body fat. Since a pound of body fat contains 3,500 calories, that would mean you took in 7,000 extra calories above your maintenance caloric intake level in only one day or two. But, when you add up your actual caloric intake over that time it doesn't come anywhere close to that amount, adding up to much less. What's going on? Where did that extra weight come from?

Aside from carrying extra food in your belly (gastrointestinal contents) the usual explanation for such a sudden increase in weight and waist size following a proper diet is bloating from increased salt intake.

Common table salt is the term used for the sodium chloride we add to our food. The amount of salt we shake onto our food, however, is not usually our main source of salt intake. We receive about 80% of our salt intake from sodium chloride which is added to most of the processed food we eat. And it seems we are eating more processed food today than ever. Our bodies only require about 500 mg of sodium a day, and this should be obtained from within natural foods, not added to food in the form of sodium chloride. However, we typically get as much as 6,000-8,000 mg of sodium a day! Salt is practically everywhere, and its harmful effect on our bodies is also rampant among us, causing health problems ranging from cardiovascular disease to cataract formation!

The reason salt causes bloating is that your body retains water to dilute it in order to protect your tissues from salt's harmful irritating effect. Getting a bit of salt in your eye is a good demonstration of this irritating effect. If you can imagine that irritation occurring throughout your body, you'll begin to see why salt causes so many health problems.

Salt and Vision Problems

Speaking of salt and your eyes, there is much evidence to implicate salt in causing vision problems. The eyes, after all, are part of your body, and they can be affected by the bloating resulting from salt intake as much as other tissues. When this bloating from salt (edema) occurs in the eye, the alignment of the eye's internal components may be thrown off resulting in errors of refraction. Although surgeon's can correct some of these alignment problems by cutting and flattening the cornea, this does not address the cause of the cornea's swelling (corneal edema), which may result from salt water bloating within the eye. Researchers have induced edema in the cornea of laboratory animals by soaking the removed cornea in a salt solution. Research also showed that cataract formation, a clouding of the lens, was positively associated with salt intake (Cumming, 2000).

China, Japan, and other Asian countries have the highest consumption of dietary salt in the world, and these countries also have the highest prevalence of nearsightedness, or myopia. Primitive populations within Africa, Brazil, and other areas with low salt intake do not have high reported rates of myopia. Studies of the traditional hunter/gatherer diet of Eskimos showed that myopia increased in younger generations of Eskimos who began to eat a Western diet, which included more salt. The Journal of the American Medical Association reported back in 1947 that vision improved in patients who followed a low-salt Rice Diet developed by Kempner.

The body contains sodium-potassium pumps within most of the cell membranes that help to eliminate excessive amounts of sodium. However, these pumps can only achieve their objective of maintaining the proper concentration of intracellular sodium when they are not overloaded with a continual heavy intake of salt.

Salt and Vascular Problems

Although scientists have long suspected a link between salt intake and cardiovascular disease, a recent study by Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School (Cook et al, 2007) confirms that people who reduced their salt intake by 25-30% had an equal reduction in risk of cardiovascular disease of 25%.

Dr. Norm Campbell of Blood Pressure Canada, who is leading the development of a National Sodium Policy in Canada, states, "If we discovered that a food additive was causing 30 percent of all cancers, something would be done right away. The same action is needed with sodium to prevent stroke, heart disease and other vascular illnesses."

In the U.S., the American Medical Association is urging the federal government's Food and Drug Administration to immediately place mandatory regulations on the amount of salt added to processed foods.

Is the obesity epidemic that is plaguing developing countries caused in part by people catching obesity from each other, much as they catch a contagious disease during an infectious epidemic? Some researchers believe the answer to this question is yes—people can pass along an unhealthy amount of excess body weight to others, although not through microorganisms. Rather, these researchers believe obesity can be transferred from one person to another through social factors.

In approaching the problem of obesity, Blanchflower, Oswald, and Landeghem (2008) hypothesized that, for most people, satisfaction with one’s own bodyweight is relative to other people’s weight, and would be dependent on how much other people weighed. In other words, if you are overweight, and if people around you tend to be overweight, you will be more satisfied with your own weight when comparing your weight to other people, rather than if people around you tended not to be overweight. In addition, the researchers hypothesized that people subconsciously adjust their lifestyle behaviors to allow their weight to keep up with their overweight neighbors, which the researchers described as “keeping up with the weight of the Joneses.”

In the words of these researchers, “…it may be easier to be fat in a society that is fat.” Viewed in this manner, efforts to break away from the norm, and remain as slim or slimmer while the population grows increasingly overweight, may be considered deviant behavior. Nevertheless, even slim people may be affected by the population’s rise in body weight. For example, if a slim person allows his or her weight to rise by the same percentage as the rest of the population, he or she would still derive satisfaction from remaining relatively slim in comparison to other people’s weight. Nevertheless, the researchers noted that some slim people, rather than allowing their weight to rise with the general tide, will attempt to directly oppose the trend within the population, and endeavor to become even thinner than before. The researchers found that these people tend to be more educated and wealthier, and they tend to set their own standards—without following the herd. The researchers suggested that socially contagious forms of obesity are possible, and that "imitative obesity" warrants further study.