fitness - This Little Light

Every time I go for a run, I think about how much I would love to help other people also enjoy exercise. So, I decided to write a blog about it. This may be one of my most boring posts, but I thought maybe I could inspire others to just get out there and move. First off, exercise has NEVER helped me with weight loss. Like, even when I was biking 30 miles a day, I still could NOT lose weight. It has definitely helped to increase my tone and joint health, but the best thing about exercise for me is the psychological benefits.

The theory behind exercise in weight loss, as I understand it, is not that you burn the calories and then have a calorie deficit, allowing you to lose weight. If anything, when I exercise, I become ravenous and definitely eat the calories I had just burned under the idea that “Hey, I exercised, now I can eat whatever I want” because, remember, an hour on the treadmill (like, a frickin’ lifetime) is only a candy bar’s worth of calories. No, the theory is that you change the metabolism of your body. You are starting to change your body, waking it up and making it work. Did you know that your skeleton is constantly breaking itself down and rebuilding? This also happens to your muscles and joints. When you go out and stress your body physically, you are doing minor but all over “damage”, stressing the bones and muscles. The body immediately begins to rebuild the damage done and your bones can even reshape themselves to better be able to deal the the type of stress you are putting on them. This kicks your body into a catabolic (burning calories) reconstruction phase. Like remodeling your bathroom starts with small changes like picking the dirty towels off the floor. You can’t expect to start with the sledge hammers.

Exercise will help your joints in the long run as well. I tell this to some of my orthopedic patients as well. Joints are responsible for allowing motion in your limbs, but they don’t have to do all of the work. My joints are very weak and the connective tissue is stretchy and easily fails me. This works out for rolling my ankle on the trail as I can just continue on my run with just a sore outer calf muscle for a couple of days, but it can also be detrimental. My joints are not tight, when I make motions, they don’t move just as they are supposed to; they wobble a little and over a long period, this can cause inflammation and pain. I had a doctor tell me to work on the muscles around the weak joints to help with pain. So, building up a thick muscular support system around your joints allows your body to obtain the stability without relying on the joints alone.

For me, anyway, just knowing how the exercise is affecting my body and the mechanics and theory behind it all helps me to design a workout regimen that suits my particular body. Doing a once weekly weight routine (though gut wrenching because I HATE it) actually improves my running and other activities more than I would have thought.

When you decide to start an exercise program, don’t expect to move mountains in your first week. Get your body into a state where you won’t injure yourself. Start with a brisk walk or light jog. Best if you are slightly sore that night, but not right after you’re done. Do this for a couple of weeks before you really start with exercise. If you start off fast and injure yourself, you have not only NOT helped yourself, but you have hurt your long term mobility. This is especially true as you get older. When you’re 18, sure, go out and cold turkey a 3 mile run, no problem, but when you’re mid 30s or older, your body is going to need an introduction first.

The biggest thing about keeping up with an exercise routine, as my dad told me once, is just to find what you can do, what you enjoy, and just do it. If you like running, run, if you like dancing, dance. If you don’t have time for a set aside exercise time, blast some party music and work up a sweat doing the chores that need to be done. Don’t judge yourself against others who choose to do other forms of workouts. I like to trail run by myself so that I can run when I want, and then walk or sprint when I want and don’t have to worry about if I’m keeping someone else back or pushing them too hard. I don’t like training for races. I like just keeping to myself and going at my pace. Others, however, can only get motivated with friends or by competing and that’s fine.

But the very best benefit I’ve found with exercise is the mental health benefits. Believe me, almost nothing the world has to offer will bother you so bad when you’re struggling to catch your breath. But even after you’ve attempted to kill yourself with bursts of wind busting sprints (or whatever) and you’re cooling down, you will (at least most people report) get a euphoric feeling. Yes, you will be dog tired if you did it right, but you will feel accomplished. Somehow that ragged, soaking in sweat, tremoring in exhaustion will feel amazing because you did it! And some experts report endorphin release upon completion of exercise. Personally, I know that I can much better manage my depression and anxiety if I stay on top of my exercise regimen. When I’m really struggling with life my doctor will ask if I have been keeping up with exercise because he knows that I need it to stay within the realm of sanity.

In case anyone is interested, my exercise schedule on my BEST weeks is to run Monday, Thursday, Friday/Saturday, weights on Tuesday. Spring and summer may vary as gardening is a huge physical workout (think “Buns of Steel – Mulching in the Mountains”). My runs consist of a 1 mile jog (10min/mile), then off and on sprint/walk – sprint/fast run until I can’t breathe, walk until breathing is controlled, but not completely recovered, then sprint/walk for another 1-2 miles, then back to a slow or extended jog for the last mile, walking when about to die. My weight routine is just this video repeated three times and then jump rope 100x front, 100x backwards, 75x front, 75x back, 50x front, 50x back, 25x front, 25x back, walking between sets until I catch my breath.

For me, music is super important, but for people like my dad, it’s just distracting. I have Pandora streaming with fast paced, dance and rock genres. And another plug for Jukebox the Ghost – about 95% of their songs are good for exercising.

Now enjoy my embarrassing basement public display of attention =)

So, when I put the question out there for subjects I should write about, someone commented that I should write about how I’ve stayed thin after three kids. So, I guess I’ll write about what I do, knowing that it wouldn’t work for everyone and knowing that I’ve been incredibly lucky with my metabolism/body type/discipline that I’ve been able to maintain a decent BMI throughout my first 36 years of life. Also, understanding that at any moment, all that could change and I could put on 100lbs over a year because of hormones or what not.

********** I am not a human nutritionist. Seek the advice of your physician before trying any of this.

**High school us. Tony looks weird. He was 6’2″ and 155lbs**

So, in the beginning, I was a stick. No shape, just knobby knees and blonde hair. I was 5’8″ and around 130 throughout college. I always made it a point to go for a run at the intramural fields and during the ridiculously hot, humid summer in Athens, GA, I would ride my horse at daybreak for over an hour, then go for a run, then cut the grass or dig in the garden until I got chills and had trouble hearing. I’d go gorge on watermelon and water until my ears cleared up again. Then, vet school hit. Let me tell you something about vet school, you don’t move much. You sit in a classroom for 8 straight hours, then go directly home to study until midnight (because I believe in getting sleep to retain information), the only thing keeping your eyes open and brain somewhat working was constantly drinking or munching on something. This allowed me to gain a good 20 lb.

I was always in denial about my weight gain. I exercised – running 5-10 miles or biking 30 miles a day, I cut out all fat and ate TONS of fiber, I still couldn’t get it off. I have NEVER in my life had an issue, so I chalked it up to muscle and so forth. Then, I got pregnant with India and when I had gained another 25 lbs, my doctor said something to me about being overweight and I was shocked. I denied it at first and made him back track some, but later, after India was born and I lost all that weight and more, I was finally able to admit that I was probably overweight and needed to start being careful. Here are some “tips” that may or may not work for you, but seemed to work for me.

When pregnant/breastfeeding, don’t eat for two. Maintain your normal diet before you got pregnant (unless, of course you were too thin) to help to keep the weight gain to a minimum. It’s super hard though, especially in that first trimester, at least for me when I constantly felt the need to vomit unless I was eating a simple carbohydrate (bread, crackers, candy). Advice for that is just to do what you have to do to get through it. Every pregnancy is different and every person is different, but don’t use the pregnancy as a reason to throw out all your normal rules/guidelines for your eating.

**My first picture with my first baby.**

2. Breastfeed! – If you can at all breastfeed, even if you have to supplement with some formula, do this. This, of course, as long as you’re at a job where you can go to pump; not all jobs will cater to pumping breaks *evil eye stare*. Yes, breastfeeding is good for your baby, antibodies, blah, blah, blah, but it also can burn up to 600 calories PER DAY!! That’s equivalent to running a 10 minute mile for 6 miles everyday. Admittedly, I was only able to breastfeed Oscar for the entire suggested 1 year, but was unable to with India for more than 4 months before I dried up, and Calvin for only 9 months. Note: if you can’t breastfeed for WHATEVER reason, do NOT feel like a failure as a mother. No one can tell the difference between formula and breastfed people – except that my brother was breastfed his whole 12 months and I only got 2 months and was formula fed from there and he IS smarter than me. But, he also has asthma and I don’t. There’s all the proof you need.

**The biggest I have been – around 170 by the time India was born**

3. The 2000 calorie per day recommendation on the back of every single nutrition facts is based on the raging metabolism of an 18 year-old male. So, unless you’re an 18 year-old male, or run 8 miles a day, try finding a calorie calculator and don’t be too shocked when it tells you you should only eat 1200 calories per day. Cry a little, it’s allowed.

4. Don’t count your exercising as negative calories. Yes, they are, but if you think “I went for a run today, I deserve an extra beer, ice cream, and a midnight bowl of cereal” you will be deceived. If you keep track at all of your calories burned via app, etc, a) always assume they’re lying to you and b) remember (and cry a little) when you remember you can run your butt off for 3 miles and would have barely covered a single serving of vanilla ice cream, which, devastatingly enough is only 1/2 cup (measuring cup, not Big Gulp). Try eating just 1/2 cup of ice cream.. go ahead. That’s what I thought. Exercising is fantastic for you, great for cardiovascular health and building moderate muscles will help support your joints, especially as you age, and secretly you can remind yourself that more muscle increases your metabolism, but don’t let your stomach in on that bit of knowledge.

**Okay, if you hike North Mannitou Island (MI) and get lost** **and end up hiking 20 + miles, you can probably eat a lot more – except that you only have peanut butter and tortillas.**

5. Get familiar with food’s caloric content, but don’t obsess over it. Try keeping track of EVERYTHING you eat for a little while, but once you feel you have a general sense of caloric content – like eating out anywhere and ordering anything is a minimum of 1000 calories – you may be able to let it go. You may learn disturbing things like I did and all those harmless bite sized candy bars receptionists have at their desk or those insignificant donut holes actually add more to your end of day calories than the carefully calculated meals you obsessed over. When I used to keep a journal of my calories eaten, I would often just choose not to add those tiny insignificant calories and then when I saw that I had was negative 200 calories for the day, I would think “oh, good, now I can have ice cream” (remember that, literally, no one can just eat 1/2 cup of vanilla ice cream WITHOUT the chocolate syrup, mini marshmallows, and rainbow sprinkles) – I write this while enjoying a piece of birthday cake (the good kind with buttercream frosting) and a cup of coffee cause everyone knows that birthday cakes don’t count.

**Tony’s siblings and company winning at kickball in our Holiday Day Olympics**

6. Learn about the value of each food’s caloric content. Not all calories are created equal. I used to be extremely diligent about eating fat free foods as it was how I was raised with my mother constantly trying to lose weight and dieting. I even applied it to my daughter when she was born (and likely harmed her in some way, I’m sure) and fed her fat free cottage cheese and cringed at buying whole milk when she was a year old. Then, after I had Oscar, I took part in a self-care vetCE (continued education) where the speaker talked about the possible benefits of increasing the fat in your diet and decreasing the carbohydrates. I’m not talking about the keto diet – I have treated plenty of animals in the grips of ketoacidosis and do not recommend it – just decreasing the amount of carbs. In very simple terms, carbohydrates (sugars, breads, cereal grains) give you a “cheap high” – they make you feel good, but then less than an hour later, you’re starving again – a reason it baffles me how many diet snacks are carbohydrate based. Protein and fat, on the other hand will give you a nice slow burn (making sure you are not forbidden from increasing these in your diet by your doctor – my father cannot have almost ANY fat in his diet, including the “good fats”). You won’t feel immediately satisfied, but it will last so much longer. This is why a balanced diet is stressed by nutritionists. Being dramatically one way or the other can be harmful.

**Tony and I when I was first pregnant with India**

7. Really pay attention to your body and it’s responses to eating, drinking, and not eating or drinking. Feeling hungry and you shouldn’t be? Try drinking water, try to busy yourself with a task and tell yourself you’ll have a snack after it’s done. Feeling hungry and dizzy, probably want to eat something. Depriving yourself of all the good stuff all the time will just make you want to eat all the things after doing so well for so long (like 2 hours in my case if I tell myself not to eat something). After having dinner (try using small plates and only getting one small serving – you don’t have to feel miserably full to be full) if you’re truly craving some chocolate ice cream, have some, but make sure you’re REALLY craving it and not just “that sounds nice”. I know that I, personally, will just get into habits like having ice cream every night after dinner (the peer pressure from my husband doesn’t help) but that most of those times my appetite and craving center is actually quiet and content, but then I just eat the ice cream because it’s what we do after dinner. Or if I have a particularly stressful day at work, I’ll get home and enjoy some cheese balls and some red wine. Then a few days later, I’ll find that I’ve been doing that same thing every day since trying to re-create that amazing feeling of de-stressing that I had on the first day. By far, most of the time, I’m really not that stressed and don’t really want that drink, but do so out of habit. Stopping drinking with cheese balls and after dinner ice cream (we’re talking salted caramel with chocolate syrup, mini marshmallows, and rainbow sprinkles – and not no 1/2 cup neither!), I could save myself 5,300 calories a week! If I just didn’t have those little extras everyday, I could possibly lose 1.5 lbs per week! That’s never going to happen, but I could!

8. Finally, my best piece of advice: become such a worrier that you develop stomach pains every time you eat =) Just kidding, don’t do that. But, seriously, I wish I could say that I follow all these dieting tips and it keeps me looking like I do, but I know that I struggle with self discipline as much as the next person. So whether you consider me lucky, blessed, or cursed with anxiety and digestive issues, don’t get discouraged, and as Anne Sewell wrote “Do your best and leave the rest for it will all come right one day or night.” <3

Tag: fitness

Exercise schmexercise!

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