2nd Wind Blog

Forgive the baseball analogy (I’ve got Twins Fever). I’m actually talking about Cholesterol.

You may not want to know this, but yours may be high (even if your not overweight). If you haven’t gotten it checked, you need to. There are a lot of people who are 40 and above who’ve convinced themselves that because they aren’t obese, they don’t have high cholesterol or aren’t at increased risk for heart-disease, that’s not how it works, and if you have a history of heart-disease in your family…you need to pay particular attention.

Here’s a great article about high cholesterol information and how to reduce it:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/reduce-cholesterol/CL00012

On a side-note, yes there are drugs that can help (in fact some are advertised on the page that I linked to) but I would encourage you to take a healthy approach before you pop-a-pill, follow some of these healthy tips, because the bottom line is that you may need to adopt some lifestyle changes, and pills won’t do that for you.

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How’s that for a dramatic title? It is kind of indicative of the way we treat sugars these days so before I disparage sugar it’s important that I mention that sugar, like everything else, is OK in moderation. Who’s being moderate though? the average American consumes around 156lbs of sugar a year, that’s double what health experts recommend. The recommended daily intake of sugar for someone eating around 1800 calories a day is 31 grams, that’s seven teaspoons…it’s also one, ONE can of pop.

Remember the part above about moderation?  If one can of pop hits your RDA for sugar, you just won’t have more than one can of pop, right? wrong, you’ve got aonther problem…hidden sugars.

First let’s talk about the name, “a sugar by any other name tastes as sweet”. Here are some other names for sugars you need to watch for:

 

• Beet sugar
• Brown sugar
• Cane sugar
• Confectioner’s sugar
• Crystallized cane juice
• Dextrose
• Fructose
• Evaporated cane juice
• High-fructose corn syrup
• Honey
• Invert sugar
• Maltodextrin (or dextrin)
• Maple syrup
• Molasses
• Raw sugar
• Sucrose (table sugar)
• Turbinado sugar

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So here you are health focused, exercising regularly, taking your vitamins, trying to eat healthy but you seem to have stalled or maybe your just not losing any weight at all. Take out; eating in the car and working lunches are just a fact of our lives these days as things seem to just get progressively busier.

The problem is that the supposedly healthy option may not always be that great. So the key is to plan ahead  (we made this big to make a point) know what is going into your body and when in doubt take the time to look things up. We tend to be creatures of habit so look up the menus of the restaurants and the nutritional information of the products you eat.  In the end you will get to your goals faster if you know for sure rather than relying on flashy signs and advertisements claiming health benefits.

Let’s take a look at a typical day eating out.  Listed are the bad, the deceiving and the best option for eating.

Breakfast At Starbucks

Running late stop in when you get your morning coffee

Classic Coffee Cake (not good) Nutrition Facts Per Serving (113 g) Calories 440 Total Fat 19g 30% Total Carbohydrate 63g  Protein 6g

Reduced Fat Coffee Cake (not that much better actually) Nutrition Facts Per Serving (124 g) Calories 350 Total Fat 10g 16% Total Carbohydrate 58g Protein 7g

In the end only a savings of 90 calories or approximately 7 min on an elliptical

Egg White Spinach and Feta Wrap  (winner) Nutrition Facts Per Serving Calories 280 Total Fat 10g Total Carbohydrate 33g Protein 18g

Lunch at Jimmy Johns

Its got to be better than greasy hamburgers and fry’s right?

Hunters Club (might as well have a Big Mac) Nutrition Facts Per Serving (388.75 g) Calories 807.3 Total Fat 34.77g Total Carbohydrate 66.7g Protein 51.67g

Hunters Club Unwich (little better but still a lot of fat) Nutrition Facts Per Serving (310.75 g) Calories 470 Total Fat 34.88g Total Carbohydrate 3.93g Protein 37.47g

Little better saved 337 total calories but still 35g of fat is really high and with out a mixture of carbs and protein you will feel less full and be dragging in a couple of hours.

Turkey Tom no mayo (Winner) Nutrition Facts Per Serving Calories 321.9 Total Fat .83g Total Carbohydrate 50.27g Protein 24.4g

Snack at a Gas Station

On the run and need to eat be careful!

Snickers (duh it’s a candy bar) Nutrition Facts Per Serving (1 bar) Calories 280 Total Fat 14g Total Carbohydrate 35g Protein 4g

Met-RX Big100 (looks like all the others but is actually a meal replacement) Nutrition Facts Per Serving (1 bar) Calories 400 Total Fat 12g Total Carbohydrate 44g Protein 31g

Uh oh actually added 120 calories better add that time back onto the elliptical.

Peanut butter Luna bar (winner) Nutrition Facts Per Serving Calories 180 Total Fat 6g Total Carbohydrate 26g Protein 9g

Sources of information:

http://www.starbucks.com/menu

http://www.jimmyjohns.com/menu/nutrition.aspx

http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/calories_burned.asp

http://www.metrx.com/labels/014951.pdf

http://www.snickers.com/default.htm

http://lunabar.com/products/bars/peanut_butter_cookie/

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I was recently reading an article about childhood obesity, it raised some concerns I had heard before: Increased chance of Type 2 Diabetes, High levels of Cholesterol and High Blood Pressure, Sleep Apnea, etc. These are all serious concerns, but according to reserchers at the Medical University of South Carolina, there is another concern, specifically for young girls.

Obese girls, defined as at least 10 kilograms (22 pounds) overweight, had an 80% chance of developing breasts before their ninth birthday and starting menstruation before age 12 – the western average for menstruation is about 12.7 years.

Early-onset puberty could have serious health and social consequences, experts say, including increased incidence of teenage depression and of cancer in later life, but there’s more…much more, if your interested, the entire article is here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37344482/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/

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Heard that one before? Yeah, I tell myself that one almost daily. Why is that? Why is that once you start working out it’s easier to do it the next day? It seems that once I’ve started the rhythm it’s effortless to keep it going, especially after I start feeling better, which usually takes less than a week.

The bottom line is that motivation is probably a much more devious enemy than other excuses like access or even time. What? It’s always about time! I don’t agree, I think we all find the time for something we are motivated to do. So how do you self-motivate?

For me, the best way to accomplish something is to get started, and the best way for me to get started is to start small. Instead of visualizing your workout as a big hairy deal, just do something minor, remember the point is to just do it, that’s all you want to do, just get started (even if it’s for just five minutes).

Here’s a good article with some other great workout motivation tips. Enjoy.

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Have you registered for 2nd Wind Facebook Sweepstakes? What!? Are you really sure you want to miss a chance at winning a brand new piece of exercise equipment?

Here’s our most Recent Winner, Kristin Atchison, she’s a U of M student and the proud owner of a brand new PaceMaster GoldVR Folding Treadmill valued at $2849!

 
Kristin told me that…”she’s never won anything”, but she hit it big with a free treadmill this time!

You could be the next winner, be sure to enroll in the Sweepstakes at our Facebook page!

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This is a very interesting article about the mental aspects of losing weight. Many people feel that being thinner will solve all their problems (like only overweight people have problems).

It’s interesting to me, because I think we are all guilty of this sort of thinking; if I had more money everything would be fine, if I had a girlfriend, life would be perfect, etc (I have a wife already, so a girlfriend would probably cause problems).

Anyway, give it a read, if you have a thought, post a comment.

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Hey, get your mind out of the gutter, I’m talking about equipment review websites. The fact is, all equipment reviews are not created equal, some are genuine, while others are as fake as the wood grain on a LeBaron Stationwagon.

I used to fall asleep in the back on the way home from Grandma's

Many sites are “affiliate marketers” which means that they are not impartial or objective, mainly because they get paid either “per click” or “per purchase” from vendors they are affiliated with. The FTC got wise to sites offering “reviews”, but were actually profiting by referring you to vendors they were affiliated with and took action, these sites are now required to post a disclosure like this one. I don’t know about you, but this really bugs me, it’s like finding out Microsoft isn’t going to send me money when I forward an email, or that I really didn’t win the European Lottery (They said the funds were held up because they didn’t have my bank account number). You and I both know that the internet is FILLED with incorrect, phony and dated information, so it’s really annoying to discover that what I thought was a REAL resource…wasn’t.

So where’s the reliable info at when it comes to rating Exercise Equipment? Do any of you subscribe to consumerreports.org? I do, and it’s money well-spent. The Consumer Reports name is one of the few out there that has established a degree of credibility and impartiality that many of us trust and rely on…I know I do. I’ve used their reviews quite often, and think they are an excellent and more importantly, reliable and unbiased source. Although CR only reviews a limited number of Treadmills and Ellipticals, the reviews are clear concise and easy to understand. CR did review a few items that 2nd Wind sells: for Ellipticals,  our Pacemaster Silver EXT and Octane Q37c both rated in the top five.

The Octane Q37c

For Treadmills: Our PaceMaster Platinum Pro VR placed 3rd, our Vision T9600 was in the top-five and the Vision T9200s was a “Best Buy”. Perhaps the most well-known free site for equipment reviews is treadmilldoctor.com, although they do have clearly marked “sponsored links” they do offer objective and well-written reviews for treadmills and ellipticals by just about every manufacturer there is, they also review other reviewers and warn consumers about affiliate marketers.

Many of the other sites are bogus, or just steal the reviews from the credible ones we mentioned, the bottom line is that you approach reviews skeptically and remember that although lots of equipment may seem good “on paper” there is no substitute for actually getting on the equipment and seeing how it fits YOUR body.

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This is an older article from Sports Illustrated, but we all got a big kick out of the picture. If you want the read the original, it’s here. If you have a cool story about Dick or his Bobblehead, tell us about it, if you have a funny picture, mail it to me, I may post it.

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New Blog. New look. New Blogger. A recipe for web anonymity? Yea, maybe, but we would really like to create something worthwhile here, a resource, maybe even a haven for all things “exercisey” and the paraphernalia we use to achieve a healthier and better-looking chassis. I am your host…call me “Judoka”. I won’t tell you what it means, because that would be too easy, let’s just see who the clever little web-surfer is that comes up with an answer in the comments first.

In order for our little “Haven” to function properly, we will obviously need some input. I will do my best to facilitate by coming up with some provocative topics for us to banter and even debate. You can help keep it lively by adding your two cents. Normal rules apply…no naughty-talk…no nastiness, just the polite and respectful kind of discourse you might find in the US Congress…wait, strike that, let me think of a better example…

The first topic will be weight-loss…tell me about your most recent weight-loss success (or failure). Why do you think it did or didn’t work? Be sure to mention your age and gender, very often they have a lot to do with it.

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