Featured

Obesity: Many Causes, Simple Solutions!

Obesity rates continue to grow in the United States, especially among children and adolescents, and a lot of people are asking why. The biological answer is that more and more people are eating high-calorie foods without getting enough exercise to burn off the calories. But why are people eating so much? Stress, boredom, spending too much time sitting down, depression, lack of sleep, and loneliness can all lead to bad eating habits. And, of course, happiness can lead to overeating as well. Once the weight is put on, over time the body adjusts to the greater weight, and that’s when you can start to feel hungry long after the body is nourished … and that’s when the weight gain spiral can take over….

The latest research points to hormones as one cause for out-of-control appetites.Ghrelin and leptin are known as “hunger hormones.” They work together to help you stay at your current weight and keep you from losing fat. In other words, when you’re in shape, they help keep you in shape. But what about when you put on a few pounds (or a few more than a few)? What about people who have never been in shape before?…

Understanding how hormones effect your appetite is one step closer to overcoming their tendency to feed the brain bad or unproductive advice.

Ghrelin’s job is to make you feel hungry. The problem is that when you lose weight and try to keep it off, ghrelin levels often rise instead of responding to the lower weight, as if it wants the excess fat back. Ghrelin tells the brain: “You never used to feel satisfied from such a small meal, you need more food!” Leptin levels, do the opposite and switch the appetite off. The only problem is that many overweight people have developed a resistance to leptin, and even when leptin works to suppress the appetite, they still feel hungry. Leptin tells the brain: “You’ve eaten enough, you can put the fork down!” … but the message gets drowned out by the ghrelin hormone’s tempting, unproductive, and dangerous advice that it feeds the brain.

So far, scientists struggle to find ways to balance or predict these hormones, which is all the more reason why lose-weight-quick-and-easy diet schemes always fail in the long term. The only long term solution is for the mind to overcome the body’s unhealthy desires; it is the only lasting transition into fitness. This requires both personal dedication and a system of support, whether a spouse, a good friend, or a certified nutritionist and personal trainer….

Jump-Start Your Slow-Start Matches

Fighting back after a slow-start is never where you want to find yourself in a match. A new client recently expressed this very concern: “I never start my matches in a groove. I’m slow on my feet, missing my first serves, hitting my groundstrokes long and my overheads into the net. It’s only once I’m down a few games that my groove kicks in, and I try to fight my way back, but by then it’s sometimes too late, or I exhaust myself in the process.”

Few can shrug off a slow-start like Federer did against Falla earlier this year. More often than not, a low energy start will lead to a low energy finish. The more you jump-start your slow-start matches through mental and physical preparation, the better chance you have to play at your peak level. Win or lose, that’s all you can hope for. Every match is an opportunity for you to play better than you have ever played before, starting with the very first point. …

Let’s face it: How are you going to play the best match of your life without being prepared?

How to prepare yourself…

-Get enough rest (See my article “Sleep More, Do More”)

-Eat a proper pre-match meal (See my article “Give Your Body What It Wants: Competition Nutrition”)

-Make sure your equipment is in order

-Arrive early

-Warm up (ideally with enough time to cool-down before the match)

-If you have time, change into fresh attire for the match

-Mental match preparating (focus on the positive feeling of knowing you are going to play your best, starting with the first point, because you know you have prepared … you should feel refreshed, energized, and light on your feet before walking onto the court and meeting your opponent …)

-Study your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses and develop a game plan

-Be conscious of repeating your most common unforced errors

-Remember to stay light on your feet (See my article “Top Priority Footwork”)

-Remember the goal is to play at your peak level, if not exceed it (every point should be fought for, every hit should be deliberate and focused… In short, be true to your game, your limitations, do what you know works, and start every match with confidence. With a bit of luck, the scoreboard will start to reflect all your hard work …)

How to Calculate Your Average Workout Water Loss

You know you’re supposed to stay hydrated, but do you know how to calculate your average workout water loss? Every time you hit the gym, your body loses water. Since your body is 65 percent water, being dehydrated by as little as 2 or 3 percent can decrease performance by as much as 10 percent. Depending on your diet, hydration habits, and the intensity of your workout routine, you are more or less prone to sweat out an unhealthy percentage of water…

Now, you might be saying to yourself: “But what’s wrong with sweating a lot? I thought I was sweating off the pounds!”

It’s a common and dangerous myth that dripping sweat will drop the pounds. In fact, sweating too much can be counter productive. When you work-up a dripping sweat, your body starts to lose heat. Millions of sweat glands lying under your skin go into overdrive, consuming metabolic energy in order to secrete all the sweat. Your total energy, in effect, gets drained; and, in effect, energy is drained from your muscles… The very muscles you are trying to strengthen! 

Here’s how to calculate your workout water loss, so you know if you’re staying safely hydrated:

1. Weigh yourself before working out (For example, we’ll use a nice, round number: 200 pounds)
2. Weigh yourself immediately after working out (For example, 195 pounds)
3. Subtract the post-workout weight from the pre-workout weight (5 pounds lost)
4. Divide the pounds lost by the pre-workout weight (5/200 = .025, or 2.5% weight loss)
5. Lastly, multiply the pounds lost by 15.3, or the number of fluid ounces lost from the body for every pound lost during workout (5 pounds x 15.3 fluid ounces = 76.5 fluid ounces lost)

So, what do all these numbers mean? They mean if you weighed 200 pounds pre-workout and 195 pounds post-workout, you would have lost 2.5 percent of your body weight, and 76.5 fluid ounces of water. You might feel good about losing 5 pounds, but even at 2.5 percent body weight loss, your performance would have already degraded by a decrease in thermoregulation and a steady increase in thirst.

Negative effects on your workout performance only build alongside the percentage of weight loss. At 4 percent, your energy is now limited by 25 to 40 percent. At 5 percent weight loss,headaches are common, as well as a feeling of weakness, incoherence, fatigue, and general irritability. At 6 percent, you would feel especially weak, nauseous, and suffer from a dangerous loss of thermoregulation. Finally, at 7 percent and above, you would be in incredibly dangerous territory. Someone weighing 200 pounds would have to drop 14 pounds during a single workout in order to lose 7 percent of their body weight, which amounts to 214 fluid ounces of water, or over 26 glasses of water (assuming you drink 8 ounce glasses)! Obviously this is an extreme case, but you get the point…

You don’t have to sweat up a storm to shed the pounds. If anything, all that sweat may be slowing you down. If you stay well-hydrated, your post-workout weight loss should read close to 0 percent, which means you have enabled your muscles to workout under optimum performance conditions, unlimited by metabolic energy drain from over-sweating and fluid loss.

If you don’t want to workout the math on your own, don’t worry. Unlike working out at the gym, there are shortcuts with math, and online you can find many exercise water loss calculators.

Dietary Tips for the Summer Sun!

Summer is HERE! Don’t forget to Hydrate. . .

As the summer is finally here please do not forget to HYDRATE!! Now more than ever hydration is critical to prevent cramping and more importantly dehydration. To keep hydrated do the following:

1. drink plenty of fluids in advance (approx. 30 oz. prior to the start of exercise)

2. during exercise (aim for 15-20 oz.)

3. post hydration is equally vital (approx 20-30 oz. immediately after exercise)

Don’t neglect hydration!! If you do, you will be suffering the consequences . . . Follow the above program and you will never feel dehydrated again.

What Ever Happened To Hard Work?

Like everyone else, you want results. Like everyone else, you want to progress and grow in every aspect of your life: work, relationships, fitness, clarity of mind. Do you have what it takes to succeed? Do you have the patience, persistence, endurance and back-bone needed to put in the hard work necessary to succeed?

Even though history has shown that progress takes time and is never guaranteed, so many people continue to want (and sometimes even expect!) immediate results….

Where does this impatient desire for instant gratification come from?

-movies, TV shows and infomercials that fail to portray realistically the trials and hardships necessary to succeed (and that even then, as was discussed in last week’s newsletter, success is never a given result)

-parents who fail to challenge and prepare their children for failure (and overcoming failure through hard work)

-technology has made many of us grow accustomed to instantaneous answers to our questions (Google has replaced the hard work of memorizing information … but at what cost?)

Thomas Edison once said, “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. As a result, genius is often a talented person who has simply done all of his homework.”

Wanting Results vs. Earning Results

If you really want results, you’re going to have to earn them. There is no shortcut to a healthy body and mind. Look at the champions of any sport: Jordan, Ali, Federer … What do they have in common? Aside from the 1% of genius, they all followed through on the other 99% … the patience, persistence, endurance and back-bone.

Do YOU have what it takes?

There Are No Easy Matches

Andy Roddick is hands down one of the best tennis players in the world (no. 5 seeded, to be exact), and he probably knows better than anyone never to take victory for granted. You never know when your opponent is posed to play the match of his life, as unseeded Yen-Hsun Lu did at Wimbledon on Monday, beating Roddick in a five set quarterfinal upset.

If you’re not on your game, anyone can beat anyone

One of the most exhilarating things about sports is that upsets happen all the time. In singles, all bets are off. When you’re all alone on the court, every player becomes a team of one. When things aren’t working, you have to coach yourself back to being the better player on the court, or else you’ll lose.

Even the best players lose focus

Wimbledon is the home of many upsets. In 1965, Manuel Santana became the first defending champion to lose in the first round. And then there was no. 1 ranked John McEnroe’s loss to Kevin Curren in ‘85. Defending champion Steffi Graf’s first-round upset to Lori McNeil in ‘94. Andre Agassi’s first-round loss in ‘96. Pete Sampras’s second-round loss in ‘02. Maria Sharpova’s second-round loss in ‘08. The list goes on and on. … And on Monday, Roddick fell short on his returns, and he knew it. “I don’t view what happens today as an impossibility,” he said in a post-game interview. “It wasn’t my serve. It wasn’t my service games. It was my returning. That was crap. It was really bad.”

There are no easy matches

At the end of the day, seeded or unseeded, world renown or unknown, the player with the most fight and focus usually wins. Speaking about his state of mind going into the 5th set, Lu said to the journalists, “I don’t believe I can win, because he’s a better server than me. I mean, for chance, I don’t believe. But I just tell myself, ‘Even if I don’t believe, I have to fight….’”

Isner Wins Longest Match in History

Sports announcers at Wimbledon were left scrambling for words as the longest match in history finally came to end on Thursday between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut. The three-day match, suspended twice due to darkness, clocked in at a mind-boggling 11 hours and 5 minutes. The longest match before this one lasted 6 and half hours, less time than it took Isner and Mahut to battle out the fifth set of their record shattering match. Could there ever be a match this close again??? The stats speak for themselves: Isner landed 74% of his first serves. Mahut landed 67%. Isner had 112 aces. Mahut had 103 (both totals trampling the previous high of 78) Isner had 11 fewer double faults (10-21) Mahut had 13 fewer unforced errors  (52-39) Isner won the match (6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (3), 70-68 … even though Mahut won more overall points (478-502) Four times Isner had match point, but each time Mahut defied the odds and won back the point. When the players broke at dusk for the second time, unable to see the ball anymore after over 7 hours of back-and-forth battling on Wednesday, the crowd gave Isner and Mahut a standing ovation. On Thursday, the crowd roared once more as the players walked onto the court, tied at 59-all. Can you BELIEVE IT?? For about an hour, both players dominated with their serves. The level of focus and physical endurance it took for both players to be acing each other three days in a row is nothing short of inspirational. In the final game, Mahut gave Isner an opening after netting a drop shot on consecutive points. With his fifth match point, the first of the day, Isner ended the historic occasion with an up-the-line backhand. He collapsed on the grass. Perhaps more amazed by what just happened than anyone else, Isner suddenly sprang to his feet and started applauding with the crowd.

Summer is Here. . . Don’t Forget your Sunscreen!

With summer solstice coming up-the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere-now is as good a time as any to remind everyone not to forget their sunscreen. According to the FDA, over 10,000 people die each year from skin cancer. Unless you plan on staying out of the sun all summer, sunscreen is your #1 protection from UV rays and indirect DNA damage that can lead to cancers like melanoma. Yet, even though UV rays are carcinogens for the human body, weakening the immune system and radiating skin, why do so many people leave their sunscreen at home? I’ve heard every excuse in the book. “I’m only going to be on the court for an hour.” “I never wore sunscreen as a kid.” “My skin doesn’t burn.” “I’m wearing a hat today.” “It’s cloudy out.” Why take the gamble? UV rays are practically everywhere. It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing a hat, sitting in the shade, or the gray morning haze has yet to burn off. Even if you never feel burned from the sun, damage from UV radiation is not something to mess around with. Play it safe, protect your skin, and have fun in the sun this summer!

We’ll Miss You Coach Wooden…

On June 4th the world lost not only one of the best coaches of all time, but a man of integrity and humility; a man on a mission to inspire those who knew him, those who played for him, and those who read his books, to face their fears and discover their own potential.

Last week, Coach John Wooden passed away. A sports legend by any standard, Wooden was the first to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach. In only a 12 year period, he led UCLA to 10 NCAA championships-a record unmatched by any basketball coach since (and will in all likelihood remain unmatched).

Called the “Wizard of Westwood,” Coach Wooden preferred to stick to his down to Earth Indiana roots. The only magic he knew of came about through old-fashioned hard work and determination. His maxims are now used by coaches of just about every sport out there: Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. … Flexibility is the key to stability. … Be quick, but don’t hurry…

He lived his life according to a Seven Point Creed given to him by his father when he graduated from grammar school. Among the points are timeless perils of advice, such as:

-Be true to yourself
-Make each day your masterpiece
-Help others
-Make friendship a fine art

Coach Wooden was a man who stayed true to his core beliefs. He never earned the big bucks. He married his high school sweet heart and stayed married for 53 years until she passed on. And now, the legendary coach and role model has passed on at 99 years. May his countless insights continue to inspire and challenge us all to better ourselves, and uplift each other.

Next Page »