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Yoga Keeps Weight Off in Middle Age
yoga helps keep people more in tune with their bodies and eating habits and aware of bad habits, such as eating because of stress, boredom or depression.”You become very sensitive to the feeling of being stuffed,” he added.The researchers collected data from 15,500 people between the ages of 53 and 57 who were asked about exercise, weight, health and diet histories. The findings, published in the July/August issue of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, showed that those who practiced yoga tended to avoid junk food and overeating because they wanted to respect their bodies.
USATODAY.com – Yoga helps keep weight off in middle age, study suggests
Interesting article.
Because the link between yoga and weight loss has more to do with increasing the awareness of your body from yoga practice.
When you get more aligned, when you get better balanced, when you learn to tune into what is happening in your body…
you will find that you just no longer want to eat junk like…
Potato Chips
Friend Food
Fast Food
And yes, even meat.
Keep on practicing your yoga.
Gary
Cellular Health Article by SoCalRunning.com Member Shelli Stein
Shelli running the Honolulu Marathon
Taken from the August JoyInMovement.com newsletter:
Hello friends, and welcome to this month’s JoyInMovement newsletter,
I thought this month we’d have a cellular conversation. Now for some cellular time together. The health of your body depends on the health of your cells. We have over 75 trillion cells in our body. Cells process the nourishment we need and get rid of our waste, keeping us energized and alive. Cells have different functions and need oxygen in order to perform them. They also use oxygen to convert glucose into ATP (adenosine triphosphate), our body’s fuel. If we want to maximize our overall health we need to ensure that we receive the optimum ingredients our cells require.
Much research has been done to decipher what cells need to live. Correlations have been found, for instance, between the level of oxygen in a person’s bloodstream and their level of health. A lack of oxygen will destroy cells, and if cells are given their basic needs and not poisoned by their own environment, they live on and on.
Dr. Stanley Robbins of Harvard Medical School suggests that there are 6 basic causes of cellular atrophy:
1. Decreased work load
2. Enervation
3. Diminished blood supply
4. Inadequate nutrition
5. Loss of endocrine stimulation
6. Aging
In leading a life full of health and vitality we must remember certain guiding principles:
* the key to a healthy body is healthy CELLS.
* the most important element of cellular health is OXYGEN.
* anything that disturbs the biochemical or electrical functioning of the cells or deprives them of oxygen is potentially disease producing.
* the build-up of toxins in our system is a result of unhealthy conditions. Think about the air we breathe, water we drink, foods we eat and the movement choices we make.
As I mentioned at the start of this letter, the key to health is energy and all our energy starts with our cells. Cells only have energy when they have enough OXYGEN, NUTRIENTS and ways to eliminate waste. Optimal oxygenation of your cells comes about through proper nutrition, fluid intake, exercise and stress management.
I don’t want to get overly technical or go deeper into each area of optimal oxygenation that I mentioned. I am, however, in a “back to basics” mode though, and when we who find “joy-in-movement” think about achieving our optimum balance between health and fitness, we must start with the basic building blocks—our cells! If your health is in a less than optimal state and you feel one or more of your systems be it nervous, muscular, skeletal, circulatory, digestive, lymphatic, hormonal or other isn’t up to snuff, then I’m suggesting you need to look at your cellular health.
Now for this month’s energy drain. How about our unfinished business? Anyone out there with decisions that need to be made or projects you have postponed that need doing? Don’t know about you, but when I tend to my unfinished business I feel so much better and energy for other things comes flooding back in. I think a big part of the dilemma is that we think we need to make perfect decisions. When I trust myself and decide to either do it or just let it go altogether–the do it or dump it theory–it seems to get done just fine!
A friend sent me my horoscope today—-it read, “You’ve conquered some demons lately. Celebrate with dance and song, flowing scarves and hot cider.” What can I say? I never miss an opportunity to dance, sing, let my scarves flow and drink hot cider, so I am signing off to do all four, though maybe not all at once. Wishing you all a fun, fanciful month.
Create some joy and move in ways that serve those cells of yours!
yours in cellular health,
Shelli
Shelli Stein, RYT, CPT
Movement Educator
JoyInMovement.com
shelli@joyinmovement.com
Tim VanOrden from RunningRaw.com Tonight @ 6 p.m
Dear Beach Runners,
Steve Mackel and Gary Smith will be interviewing a very special athlete this evening. Tim VanOrden started training for the U.S. Olympic team at the age of 38. His secret…raw foods. He claims that by eating only raw has given him the energy to instant success as a highly competitve runner. He is our kind of athlete…spiritual…holistic…conscious…and even videoblogs.
Check out his website at RunningRaw.com
Please send us any questions you have on training and especially raw foods.
Steve and Gary
EVENT: Steve and Gary’s RunCall 9 w/ Tim VanOrden
DATE & TIME: Monday, July 30th at 6:00pm Pacific
FORMAT: Simulcast! (Attend via Phone or Webcast — it’s your choice)
TO ATTEND THIS EVENT, CLICK THIS LINK NOW…
http://instantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=482232
Choose your friends wisely…
A new study finds that when the scale reads “obese” for one individual, the odds that their friends will become obese increase by more than 50 percent.
Study: Obesity is Socially Contagious – Yahoo! News
Unbelievable research study. Basically saying that if one of your friends becomes obese, there is a fifty percent or higher chance that you will become obese also.
In other words, the obesity crisis is a SOCIAL CRISIS. And is spreading like a virus because it is just becoming more and more acceptable to become obese.
Thats why joining a running community like SoCalRunning is so important…
you want your friends to be fit that will motivate you to stay on the road of fitness…
If you haven’t joined our new community please do so here…
SoCalRunning.com Members Website
Gary
Child Obesity Rates Rising
Childstats.gov – America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being 2007 – Health: Overweight
From a recent study on the wellbeing of America’s children.
Even sadder is the fact that only 20% of children get five or more servings of fruit and vegetables every day. Only one in five.
It doesn’t surprise me.
I went to market on Pacific Avenue two days ago, (lower income side of Pedro), and there was not one living fruit or vegetable to be bought.
There was lots of beer, chips, processed food, sodas, etc.
So remember when you’re eating 10 or more servings of fruit or vegetables a day, you are setting the appropriate example for your children.
It is noon as I write this and I have had 8 servings of fruit and vegetables already today.
Think that makes a difference in my running and weight loss?
You bet it does.
Gary
Vegetable-soy-fish diet lowers chance of breast cancer
Chinese women who ate a diet that included red meat, starches and sweets were twice as likely to develop breast cancer than those who ate the traditional vegetable-soy-fish diet, according to a study in the July issue of the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
Meats, Sweets May Boost Breast Cancer Risk – Yahoo! News
All the more reason to increase your servings of vegetables and fruits to 10 or more servings a day as Steve and I recommend.
Let’s face facts, our society is terribly overweight because of its diet!!!!
So have a salad for lunch and a piece of fruit and know that you are prolonging your life.
Gary
Steve and Gary’s Marathon Training RunCall 2
Another jam packed RunCall from Steve Mackel and Gary Smith including information on:
– our ultramarathon experiences from last weekend
– recovery strategies after a marathon
– plantar fascitis
– learning ChiRunning
– how many miles to run a week
– all natural electrolytes
Click Here to Listen to the Show from 6/13/07
How to do a Long Run with Style
Well I’m back from my Cambodia/Thailand trip. I could write a whole book on what I experienced over there, but I will share these memories more in conversation. Its good to be back and running with this exceptional running community.
I look forward to teaching this group yoga which I practiced diligently on my trip.
My running practice however, slipped up a little bit. I needed a break after running an ultramarathon in December. My goal is to just keep up with uber athlete Steve Mackel on Saturday. My technique is still good, just lost a little cardio with all the fun I was having in Thailand.
So overall, I had a great year last year. I ran three marathons and an ultramarathon. I didn’t accomplish my time goals but those are becoming more and more irrelevant for me. I also got certified as a yoga instructor so easily did over 300 hours of yoga last year. That’s why I am so flexible. Its just a matter of doing the work. You all could accomplish things like this also. Have patience and try to do a little more every week than the week before and you’ll get there.
So these are some important lessons I’ve learned from training for 8 marathons and an ultramarathon.
Gary’s Top Ten Tips for Doing a Long Run
1. Drink Water and Electrolytes. Easiest way to do this is to set your watch to beep every ten minutes and when it does, just have a sip of water. Another option is to have a small drink, certainly not a whole glass of water, every mile. Either way would work. the key is not to drink constantly and to not drink too much which will make you feel water blogged. You need to use electrolytes. Electrolytes are minerals which help transport electrical signals through your muscles. Without using electrolytes, your muscles can bonk, making you feel exhausted later in the run. I like to use Ultima powder which you can find at whole foods. Gatorade has some electrolytes but also a bunch of corn syrup and enough artificial preservatives for a fifty year shelf life.
2. Be sure to breathe deeply. The best way to do this is to inhale to the count of four and exhale to the count of four. Try your best. Another thing I do is to count breaths up to 50 or 100, something to keep your mind busy on those long lonely stretches. Oxygen and water are the most important nutrients on your run.
3. Eat every hour. You have a few options here. Some people like gels but I find them a little too yucky yucky syrupy. I like to use cliff bars and powerbars. The food is solid and burns more slowly giving less of a spike that you get from the gels. So on a long long run I will take two cliff bars, and each hour eat about a half/quarter of the bar. You need to eat for fuel. You need to eat for fuel. You need to eat for fuel.
4. Relax. Constantly scan your body for any areas of tension. Sometimes my shoulders get tight for example. So I am working on relaxing my shoulders during the whole run, just repeating the mantra “relax, relax, relax” will do wonders, just try it. You will do better when you are relaxed. In fact to go faster, you don’t need to try harder, just relax.
5. Start off slow and run slow until your turnaround point. I know, Steve and I repeat this over and over and over again. But I cannot stress enough how important this on your long training runs. Running slow will allow your body to transition to fat burning about an hour or so into your run. Once you are burning all those Pringles and pizza away, you can run an ultramarathon or longer. But most runners start out to fast and consequently are operating off the sugars in their system which burn out quickly and consequently you bonk and are stumbling along like a junkie looking for their next “gel/sugar” hit. Once you get to the turnaround point then increase your lean, for a slightly faster run back in.
6. Use body glide or vaseline on any area that rubs. For me that means, all around my groin area, between my legs, between my butt cheeks, my nipples, and underarms. I’ve experienced the alternative far too many times and it is painful.
7. Have a conversation with someone you don’t normally talk to. Always a fun goal for me. This will help hours of your run fly by. I have had some of the best conversations of my life on long runs.
8. Say “good morning” to all you pass. This sends positive energy out to the universe and what we send out we get back a hundredfold.
9. Its okay to walk. Remember it is a training run. So if you feel any pain or real discomfort, slow down, walk for a little bit, then start running again. I have seen too many runners in three seasons of coaching try to run through pain which has only aggravated or created injuries. When you feel pain, it is your body sending a VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE to you, so listen to it, slow down, and figure out what’s going on. This is a training run, so the goal is to stay healthy for the marathon. So if need be screw your “time goal”, “pace” or whatever notion you had in your head of what you were going to do that day and LISTEN TO YOUR BODY.
10. Practice some spirituality out there. Some simple things I do for this include:
Look at birds.
Pray to God.
Thank my ancestors for sacrificing so much for me to do this.
Think of heros that had a lot of strength like Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Just feel grateful
Hopefully these tips will help you on your long runs this weekend. I look forward do running with all of you.
Namaste,
Gary
Quit eating with your eyes and listen to your body!
NEWARK, N.J. – Along with the American waistline, the American plate and portion size have grown too. A study at Rutgers University supports earlier research that people today eat bigger servings than they did 20 years ago.
People aren’t realizing how much they are eating,” said Jaime Schwartz, a registered dietitian and one of the authors of the study. “The larger portion size they’re eating — even if it’s a healthy food — is still more calories.”“People are eating with their eyes and not their stomachs,” Schwartz
said. “They’re not listening to their bodies to tell them when to put
the fork down.”
Over 20 years, portions have grown – Yahoo! News
This is something I have suspected for a while. That the obesity
crisis is coming from huge portion sizes, supersizing, buffets, large
plates, Vegas, etc.
This is something I am trying to work on constantly. To eat less than what my eyes tell me.
Great advice in this article about listening to your body instead of eating mindlessly. (Like sitting in front of a TV).
Gary
technorati tags:obesity, lose, weight
Average U.S Child Consumes Too Many Calories… then watches TV.
TUESDAY, Dec. 5 (HealthDay News) — It’s no secret that American kids eat too much. Now, a new study provides some specific numbers that could help fight the obesity epidemic.
Over a 10-year period, the average child consumed up to 165 calories more than he or she needed each day — the equivalent of an entire can of soda. And the fattest teens took in as many as 1,000 calories more each day than they needed — almost as much as two Big Macs.
Average U.S. Child Consumes Too Many Calories – Yahoo! News
So by getting out and exercising we are setting up fine examples for the youth.
A big reason I run is because my father was a kick ass 10K runner. In fact he ran a 36minute 10K at the age of 40!
Kids do what they see, not what they’re told.
Founder – Coach Steve
Running Shoe Store of the Month – Jan/Feb 2017
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