Artslim
 
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The study, which appears in the current issue of the Journal of Geriatric Physical Therapy, also found that walking program participants increased their peak aerobic capacity by 19 precent when compared to a control group and increased their physical function by 25 precent.

IT WAS Reg’s 70th Birthday this week. I joked to him that I was buying him an  Audemars watch but I gave him fishing gear months ago which he had fun using for two months while we were in Queensland  Then I gave him several novels on the day.  Reg keeps himself fit by walking regularly. He wears a pedometer and walks at least 5000 steps a day sometimes as much as 12,000 steps.  He aims for the 1,0,000 steps.  This, even with arthritis.  I am proud of my man J

 
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Happy Day!.

I went to our local Coles store and bought a trolley load of healthy food for the fridge freezer and pantry and a reduced price end of season heater for my art studio room and a bunch of flowers for me  (Cancer Councils’ fund raising Daffodil Day)and I did not have to flinch at the cost.  My supermarket trolley was so heavy I almost needed roadside assistance to push it to the car.



This was all paid for, as had been my last full trolley load by my $500. Coles Gift Voucher WIN from the Michelle Bridges 12 Week Body Transformation :-).  What can I say, except a HUGE THANKYOU to Mich and her wonderful team at 12WBT and to wish them all the best and to HIGHLY RECOMEND the Michelle Bridges 12WBT program.  Just DO IT! :-) 

I have enough value left on that card for one more shopping trip. J.

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Yo-Yo Dieting 08/21/2010
 
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Achieving and maintaining a healthy weight through the right balance and forms of energy in and energy out, should be fun, not harm our body and be maintainable for life.

Self abuse extremes cannot be maintained and there is almost always an opposite reaction causing the yo-yo weight problem most dieters are plagued with.
 
LOVE yourself slim, live for life, don't diet just care for yourself, NOW, in this moment of time. How will you love yourself TODAY?


Extreme obsession with weight loss and low calorie dieting and exercising to the point of frequent injury is the opposite of the self-neglect of overeating and a sedentary lifestyle. Both are forms of self-abuse and neither solves the problem or achieves weight management long term.  I have often expressed my concern that dieting can be as much an eating disorder as overeating and cause long term body harm.  I am seeing extreme exercise amongst people who are not conditioned athletes also creating havoc with thier bodies and I know there is an internal struggle amongst all of us to find the middle ground that will work for our body and also satisfy our emotional desire to to feel fulfilled.
I have a friend with who will not put pictures of herself in digital frame because she is embarrassed by her yo yo dieting. I am trying to encourage her to realize she is beautiful at any size and to stop dieting and just eat and move in a way we do when we love ourselves.

I could write another blog about yo-you dieting, but my good friend, Carol Willis, has beaten me to it In her own great Modern Women's Guide, Blog, in this post about:-

What yo-yo dieting really does to your body  
 
Hope you find the blog interesting. :-).
 I have certainly known those times of extreme hunger or food cravings that follow deprivation dieting. 

The balanced healthy moderate eating plan I enjoy,satisfies all my body's needs for nutrition creating an  energy balance and weight management. Striving now to work out within my body's ability and so build healthy muscle and  protecting my bone density and this in helps me impove my metabolism also. This is my slow and steady way of reducing excess fat.

I have also been a yo-yo dieter and it is only in this more recent weigh release effort of three and a half years ago, where I released a lot of weight by NOT dieting, just taking very good care of myself and learning to nurture my emotional needs in ways that did not involve food, making myself step outside my comfort zone and become more active, that I learned to get rid the excess weight and be able to KEEP IT OFF.
 
I REFUSE to think, ' DIET'.
 
I do think, 'healthy, enjoyable,  satisfying, eating plan'
I do not want to set weight loss goals anymore, My extreme excess weight is gone and the bathroom scales do not measure my muscle or bone density, strong muscles and bone density, is  more important to me than BMI .

I DO want to achieve FITNESS goals and maintain and improve on great health, through a BALANCED lifestyle of delicious, nutritious, portion controlled eating, a mix of cardio, strength training and flexibility exercise, emotional satisfaction of positive thought, creativity, nature/Eco therapy and social activities. That, rather than dieting is how I succeeded in the size and health improvements I have made so far and how I intend to achieve the remainder of my fitness improvements.
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I have been neglecting my blogs, exercise, customer relations-overdue deliveries and housework.
I am taking things easy as I have had a bad head cold for over a week, other than that, life is GREAT.  I am looking forward to getting out of winter clothes and into spring casual dresses  very soon. Nothing like, a pretty dress and warm weather to elevate my mood.

I Lost 3 kilo this week and before anyone gets excited and congratulates me, lol, I gained 2 kilo the week before and I still think scales are for fish and what counts is what I do today.  I am having a great day, feet up on the sofa. A bowl of popped corn for lunch after blueberries, oats and yogurt breakfast, some mango for morning tea, skim milk n my  coffees and tea and I have a delicious homemade chicken, vegetable and wholegrain rice dinner planned ahead for tonight and this lovely pot of daffodils as my view.

Always the happy optimist I have while off with a bad cold, written a short story ready for publication. J, I can look back on this week and focus on what I have achieved, not what I have not. 

Have a beautiful, day friends  J
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Spring is nature's way of saying,
 "Let's party!" 
~Robin Williams
 
 
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Our weight can also affect the Vitamin D, low levels of Vitamin D are more common in overweight people. It is a good idea to get your Vitamin D levels, checked, if you are concerned about your weight. 
 
A study of the Vitamin D levels of obese men and women over a 11 week period prior to beginning a calorie restricted diet, and during and after this diet showed a strong relationship to healthy high levels of Vit D and successful dieting.

For every increment increase in the Vitamin D level in the dieting study participant, it was found they lost half a pound more weight.

Having higher levels of Vitamin D at the start of the diet also resulted in greater loss of abdominal fat. This abdominal fat being the most dangerous due to it's link to diabetes and heart disease.

Another potential piece to the weight loss puzzle was unveiled recently when researchers discovered there may be a link between vitamin D levels and shedding pounds.

Dr. Shalamar Sibley, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota cautioned that more controlled clinical trials are needed to see if Vit D supplements will have any benefit in helping people lose weight during diets.

Excess levels of Vitamin D are toxic and any Vitamin D level taken as a supplement is best taken only after a blood test to make sure it is required.  Vitamin D3 is the safest supplement to take and most people absorb adequate Vitamin D through an average of 15 minutes a day (variable by time of year and time of day) from the sun with highly pigmented people needing up to 10 times more sun exposure to absorb the same amount of Vitamin D as a fair skinned person.  It is impossible to overdose on Vitamin D from sunshine.  

I get my Vitamin D levels checked as they are usually low and I need to supplement under doctor and dietician guidance.
 
 
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Congratulations to the wonderful Michelle Bridges 12 Week Body Transformation friends who did boot camp, yesterday and stood up at the end, smiling. xxx
 
BMI Limitations. 08/07/2010
 
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A pear shape woman, is HEALTHY, yet it can be rated Overweight even Obese on a BMI chart. The body-builder also is given a False Obese rating using the BMI method to estimate Body Fat Percentage.
I am still having fun, spring cleaning and setting up house, following my arrival back to base camp cottage in Victoria, on Thursday afternoon.
My current project is converting the lower level, storeroom area of the split-level bedroom into an exercise area. 

Three bags full of rubbish to go out, piles of ribbons, arts and crafts supplies and stock for a  downsizing sale to start soon, and 12 hours of physical work including furniture removal as my calorie burn effort for the day, lol, I did my strength training moving a heavy table.

In the cleanup, I found a BMI and WHR or Waist to Hip ration chart, I had made for me in a healthy weight medical assessment a year ago and the BMI put me at obese and the WHI puts me at normal healthy weight.  Two totally different figures and a skin fold test says I could still lose some excess weight but where that weight is, is not going to affect my health.  

 Three different, opinions from three, different tests, by the same-trained assessors.  

They put the least importance on BMI. 

As a swimmer, I have a lot of opportunity to see other women, entering or leaving a swimming pool wearing a costume that allows me to see the huge variation in each of us and I can plainly see that body fat percentage has nothing to do with height and weight. I can see for myself the total inaccuracy of BMI as a means of assessing fat percentage.

What is BMI

BMI was first proposed about 150 years ago as a way to estimate the body fat persentage of a human, using age, weight, height and sex to calculate the figure.  There are at least three different formulas you can use to work this out, none give an accurate assesment.  

The BMI value we can't tell definitely whether the person is thin or fat because it does not have the muscle mass to fatty mass percentage and yes some people's bones are thicker.  If you are assessing your body fat percentage and using BMI you may want to  take into account a number of other parameters along with the BMI.

Waist to Hip Ratio.

  • Waist-to-hip ratio: if the coefficient is 0.5 or more this means that a person has too much abdominal fat.  it is assumed that a WHR of 0.7 for women shows that she is has the ideal shape and body fat for good health and fertility. For men the optimal value of WHR is 0.9.
As the formulas for calculating true body fat percentage are too much like mathematics for my liking, lol, I simply strip off and look in the mirror, and decide, 'Yes, I have a little more work to do", or 'Looking good, maintenance time', and I also put my faith in excellent gym trainers interested in fitness and health, not just body image and pushing you to be slim, to advertise their gym or slim program.

lol, I have a feeling, that moving heavy furniture at 64 yeas of age, with my husband of almost 70, after midnight last night, lol, J, had a lot more to do with being an eccentric, personality than achieving my goal of balance in my life, but J, no harm done this morning, J, and I am very happy to have got the hard part out of the way, the rest is just a matter of working through the, sorting, organizing and downsizing.  Nowhere near as much fun though as the radical stuff I got up to last night nor the delight in finding those hip to waist ratio formulas and my peak flow airway monitor, that showed a 20% improvement in my lung capacity, to remind myself, I am ‘doing OK. J 

 
 
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Indigo will love being a fitness trainer and walking Reg and I to the lake each day.
I plan to create an exercise room in the lower section of our split level bedroom.

Reg is going to bring our caravan TV into our home bedroom and set the Wii Fit Plus, up in the bedroom and I am going to clean out the lower half of the bedroom as my exercise project today and get back to my Biggest Loser, Full body workouts and weight loss yoga I enjoy. 

I will also be getting my Vitamin D levels checked, they are usually low even though I take Vitamin D3 supplements and try to get some sun exposure.  Low Vitamin D levels do affect our ability to lose weight as do other body functions  HCG weight loss Austin  Is a company that believes in testing thyroid function and Vitamin D, and more for people with weight problems; it is worth asking your own doctor foe some of these tests if you have been struggling in trying to loose weight.

I have been home one day and I am already comparing gyms. 

Trying to make up my mind up, if I will be, attending a gym.  

The Best gym is 6 kilometers away, in Shepparton, a 12 k round trip.  pool can get too crowded to enjoy so I started skipping the swimming, I do love the assessments and the workout equipment there.

Little gym closer to home is just over 4 kilometers away I am thinking I could put my joggers on and get a 6 plus kilometer powerwalk or part jog in just going too and from gym. on a good day. Then swim in their smaller but warmer and less crowded pool. 

Their gym, equipment room, ‘sucks; too noisy, old noisy treadmills and blaring music, I would need to wear ear muffs to use that room. 

Best gym advantages are lots of classes and pump class three times a week. Small gym advantage is enough classes and one at the same time each day two of them pump, I could get into a routine more easily there.  

Then of course I could walk the river trails at no cost and use my own weights and do my Wii Fit plus, Biggest Loser full body workout and weight loss yoga, at home. 

I will probably take out a 10 visit pass to the local gym and try it out. J. Think that’s the best option at the moment. 

Financial aspects to consider are:- Cost will be about $45. a fortnight, regardless of what gym I choose, for a one year membership and I can take a 6 week holiday from the smaller gym each year and a three month (better because I will use it), holiday from the larger gym and I can cancel my membership before the year is up, with a doctors letter, if I need to, from the larger gym. I had to do that last year, due to carer duties, so that is a huge savings if it is required.  
 
 
I have been tying my own jogger shoe laces this way for the past three years and find it gives me a firm  fit.  I was shown how to do this when I bought them.

We are returning home to our summer retreat  with my husband Reg a lot healthier than when we left for this tour, due largly to good shoes and lots of walking. We bought our summer retreat a few years ago, pulled up the grubby mismatched carpet and put down new timber look, cheap laminate flooring, that I love.

Last year I spent $350. on the same brand, different style of show, for my husband who was very unfit having wasted a lot of muscle after a debilitating bout of whooping cough that that then turned into weakness and pain throughout all his joints and muscles. He was in a bad way, and was walking, hunched over and very slow, using a walking stick and only managing short distances.  He did have a fantastic attitude and he put those new shoes on and made every possible effort to improve

I know it sounds funny to say I ‘inspected’, him naked this morning, lol J, but I did, and although he is thin, he has regained some muscle definition on his legs and buttocks where 6 months ago he looked wasted away.   He now wears a pedometer and walks 10,000 steps every day and takes pride in this J.   The difference, between him having slipped into the frail elderly,  as a result of an illness and having stayed there, getting worse as a result of lack of exercise and him regaining, fitness and the joy of life, was positive, mental attitude.

‘Just do it’, even when, it was hard, and a decent pair of well fitting shoes, ‘hang the cost’.  

The greatest wealth we have is our health.

My man turns 70 this month and I have my friend and companion back J due to his determination of spirit and a pair of properly fitted shoes that helped him get walking again.