Chapter 5

Completing the Wellness-for-Life Puzzle: Putting Your Body in Motion

In This Chapter

Moving your body more

Experiencing the wondrous ways of walking

Trading in your diet yo-yo for a pedometer

Y ou can diet and lose weight — it’s a no-brainer. But do you want to go through all that deprivation and frustration just to put the weight back on? If you’re like many folks who’ve tried to diet their way to a more slender self, you know the routine of yo-yo dieting and yo-yo weight gain. But losing and maintaining weight isn’t just about dieting and eating healthy foods. You’re reading this book, so I suspect you’re either currently on one of the controlled-carb programs out there, or you’re considering the switch to a low-carb lifestyle. Good for you.

A healthy low-carb lifestyle is made up of more than the dietary component. I also want you to complete the whole puzzle by adopting an active lifestyle by adding more movement to your day. True weight management is a balancing act of energy (calories) in versus energy (calories) out.

Don’t throw your hands up in the air. I’m not talking about spending hours in the gym — just moving more. It isn’t as difficult as it may sound, and the results can be life changing. Don’t wait — start today by taking it one step at a time. Make the switch to a healthy, active, low-carb lifestyle. And make this lane change in your dietary lifestyle your last one.

In this chapter, I psyche you up and get you moving. Although I discuss different types of moving, I concentrate on one method in particular — walking, which I guess you could call my passion. It isn’t earth shattering, but that’s the point. Almost everyone can walk, and if you strap on a pedometer to count your steps (which I tell you all about in this chapter), you can easily keep track of your progress. And though it may seem like one simple activity at first, I provide suggestions that put variety center stage.

Check in with your doctor before you start any diet or exercise program.

Moving More — Now

The ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Now is the time to take the first steps that’ll help you reach your goal of moving more while keeping an eye on the big picture of health and wellness. Anytime you take the first step into something new, you’re expanding your awareness about things around you and about yourself. The more you become aware of yourself and of what makes you tick, the more successful you’ll be with a low-carb, healthy, active lifestyle.

Physical movement isn’t punishment. For some reason, the thinking prevails that if you don’t work up a sweat and exercise until your body hurts, you’re not doing your body any good. Or that you have to immerse yourself in an unfriendly gym atmosphere that’s filled with buff people that just seem to get more buff. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Check out just a few of the fun possibilities that don’t even seem like exercise:

Line dancing or ballroom dancing

Washing your car on a sunny day

Tossing a ball with your kids in the back yard

Raking leaves or sweeping the sidewalk

Planting a garden, a flower bed, or even flower boxes on the patio

Weeding your flower beds or vegetable garden

Unlike me, some of you don’t cringe when the word exercise pops up. Check out some other sporty ideas that can be a fun way to get moving:

Swimming or doing water aerobics

Cross-country skiing

Bowling

Bicycling

Playing softball, baseball, basketball, football, or soccer

Playing table tennis

Golfing

Ice-skating

Roller-skating

Playing tennis, handball, or racquetball

You don’t have to block off big chunks of time to move more. You can just start moving more one step at a time — no rushing allowed! The more you move, the more calories you’re burning every hour.

If you have trouble making big changes, start with small ones. Think of your lifestyle change in terms of baby steps, and don’t take the next step until you’re comfortable with where you are in your daily exercise plan. Just ask any turtle, and he’ll tell you that slow and steady wins the race. Your healthy lifestyle isn’t just about dropping a few pounds or getting into that new suit and being able to button the jacket. The positive changes that you’re making are about your life — a better, healthier, and more fulfilling life!

Walking Your Way to Wellness

Walking is a user-friendly movement. You can set your own pace, and it’s almost injury-free at any age. You can just walk leisurely, or you can turn it into an aerobic movement. And you can easily increase your daily walking. Research has proven that the movement of walking at your normal pace is extremely vital to your overall health. In fact, studies are proving that the simple movement of walking may be better for your overall health than vigorous sports involvement or strenuous workouts. (For complete details about a walking program, check out Fitness Walking For Dummies, by Liz Neporent, published by Wiley.)

Walking is easy

Sure you have those minor details — like all the health benefits — that make walking so great, but there are many other reasons why walking fits nicely into your low-carb lifestyle:

You already know how to do it.

You can do it whenever you want — early in the morning, on your lunch hour, or late at night.

You can do it anywhere — when you’re traveling, camping in the woods, visiting a friend, and so on.

You don’t have to plan ahead to take a five-minute walk.

You don’t have to make an appointment or be on time to walk.

There’s no membership fee required for walking.

You don’t have to be focused to walk, which allows you to empty your brain and results in a feeling of refreshment.

You don’t have to go out and buy special clothes to walk; you can walk in your business suit or shorts.

Your hair doesn’t get hair messed up when you walk (unless it’s windy).

Although you can walk in any shoes, if you’re headed out for long or brisk walk, good, supportive walking shoes are necessary. Keep your walking shoes in your trunk — always. If you get to a doctor’s appointment and the receptionist tells you that the doctor is running about 45 minutes behind, tell her you’ll be back in a half-hour. Put those walking shoes on, and hit the pavement instead of sitting in the waiting room. Besides, everyone’s sick at the doctor’s office, so get out into the fresh air.

It benefits your body

Teaming up your low-carb, healthy lifestyle with simply moving more is a winner. You’re doubling your health benefits. Here are a few health benefits of moving a little more and taking a few more steps every day:

Curbs your appetite

Burns almost as many calories as running or jogging

Reduces stress

Improves your circulation

Improves your attitude and acts as a mood leveler

Increases your self-motivation

Increases your energy

Improves your muscle tone

Lowers your blood pressure

Reduces your risk of heart attack and cardiovascular disease

Can reduce bad cholesterol levels

Can improve good cholesterol levels

Causes you to sleep better and rest more peacefully

Increases your alertness

Helps you maintain and/or lose weight

Walking tall with good posture improves your walking form. Make sure you don’t let your shoulders roll forward when you’re walking.

Weighing in: Seeing is believing

If you want a real wake-up call about your weight and how many extra pounds you’re carrying around, do this little exercise:

1. Jump on the scale, and see what your weight is today. Write down your weight and your realistic ideal weight.

Make sure you’re projecting a healthy weight for your height and body frame. (Check out the body-mass index information I include at the end of this chapter.) To illustrate my point, suppose that you weigh 166 pounds, and your ideal weight is 150 pounds.

2. Subtract your desired weight from what you weigh today, and divide the answer by 8.

Subtract 150 from 166 to get 16. Divide that number by 8, and you end up with 2.

3. Save enough gallon water bottles to equal the number you got when you divided your desired weight by 8 in Step 2.

Sticking with the example, you need two 1-gallon bottles for this eye-opening experiment.

4. Fill each gallon container with water. Each container should weigh about 8 pounds.

5. Set the containers in front of you on the countertop and declare a moment of silence.

This visual experience enables you to actually see the extra weight you’re carrying around. It can be a real inspiration to keep your low-carb lifestyle on track. Line the water bottles up on the back porch as a daily and sobering reminder. When you lose a couple pounds, be sure to pour out that much water. You’ll feel so rewarded! And think how great you’ll feel when they’re both empty.

Stepping It Up: Pedometer Walking

Yo-yo dieting and lack of exercise (movement) are primary reasons for weight gain. You’ve already made the decision to change your life with a low-carb lifestyle, and now it’s time to take the next step to wellness and longevity. Trade in your diet yo-yo for a pedometer. A pedometer is a littler device resembling a small pager that you clip on your waistband (see Figure 5-1). The pedometer’s basic job is to count every step you take all day long. Inside this little guy is a lever, and your hip movements trip its trigger every time you take a step.

Add a pedometer to your belt first thing in the morning and follow a few simple ideas for stacking up steps. Before you know it, you’ll be walking from 7,000 to 8,000 steps a day, and you may even reach the magic number of 10,000 steps a day. “Where did that magic number of 10,000 come from?” you ask. It all started in Japan with an interest in pedometers that began with a Japanese movement called 10,000 Steps a Day. The program claims that if you take 10,000 steps a day, your health will improve, and your waist will be slimmer as a result of this simple change.

Figure 5-1: Count those steps with a pedometer.

The pedometer and the 10,000 steps program have been widely accepted all over the world, and pedometer walking organizations and clubs are springing up everywhere. The 10,000 steps program is endorsed in the fight against obesity, because it encourages people to move more and to follow a healthy lifestyle. The program is both simple and inspiring. The most positive thing about the program is that it’s doable for anyone and everyone no matter how busy they are. The 10,000 steps program is like a “move more toolkit” providing you with all the tools you need to plan and track your daily steps, all the while forming new healthy habits and making moving more of a permanent part of your healthy lifestyle. The President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports recommends walking 30 minutes at least five days a week or 10,000 steps every day.

Don’t try to accomplish 10,000 steps all in your first day of walking. Take the first step and then the next and don’t beat yourself up if you don’t do as well today as you did yesterday. After all, you’re working toward a great goal — a major change in your lifestyle. You’re a work in progress!

In shopping for a good, reliable pedometer, you need to spend only about $30 or less. There are all kinds on the market that not only count steps but also count calories. Some even talk and play music. If you search on Google (www.google.com) for “pedometers,” you’ll have more than enough to choose from. I suggest the simpler the better — all you need is one that counts steps.

A short walk through the pedometer’s history

As early as the 15th century, drawings indicate that Leonardo da Vinci was the conceptual originator of the pedometer when he designed a gear-driving device with a pendulum arm that moved back and forth with every swing of the leg during walking. Centuries later, on a visit to France, Thomas Jefferson purchased the hippest version of the pedometer available at the time. In 1965, pedometers hit the commercial market in Japan under the name manpo-kei, which means “10,000 steps meter” in Japanese. The Japanese are the leaders in pedometer use for counting steps, and it’s said you can find two or three pedometers in each household in Japan.

Taking your first step with a pedometer

Don’t make pedometer walking difficult, because it’s not. You simply clip it on at your waist every morning and hit the reset button. It counts your steps all day. You take it off at night and record the number of steps you took that day, and you start over the next day. Pretty easy, right?

For the first week you wear your new little friend on your waist, don’t change anything in your daily activity. Be sure to log your steps every night when you take your pedometer off. You may be very surprised at how little you actually move during your waking hours. Divide your total number of steps for the week by seven, and you have what’s called your baseline steps or your average daily steps. Don’t be surprised if it comes in between 2,000 and 3,000 steps, or even less — well short of the ultimate 10,000 step counts. And, it’s okay if the number is 500! Most people don’t move much, I tell you. Figure 5-2 shows a simple log you can use to record your steps.

Figure 5-2: Record your steps for first seven days.

It takes 21 days to form a habit. So if you consistently move more and wear your pedometer 21 days in a row, you form a new habit that comes as a natural part of your lifestyle and daily routine. If you miss a day in wearing your pedometer during the 21-day period, you have to start all over. Some people start a new 21-day period after they’ve been successful with the first one just to keep focused on the new, healthy habit. At the end of the 21-day block, you have more energy, are less stressed, feel better, and look better. And if you play your cards right, you may even weigh less.

Drink up

If you take long walks, especially in warmer weather, you’re likely to get thirsty. By the time your body tells you that you’re thirsty, you’re on your way to being dehydrated. So keep yourself hydrated. There’s a reason for all the hype about drinking six to eight glasses of water per day. Water is a noncaloric and a basic essential nutrient for the maintenance of your life and the proper functionality of your body. About 60 to 75 percent of your body’s weight is water — the most abundant nutrient in your body. Muscle tissue is about 70 percent water while in comparison fat contains only about 10 to 15 percent water. Every cell, organ, and tissue in your body requires water to function. Your body can go much longer without food than it can without water. Water helps carry valuable nutrients to the places your body needs them, it cleanses your body of toxins and fats, and it hydrates you. Ensure that you stay hydrated with your low-carb lifestyle — drink up! Visit www.watercure.com to find out all about the cures of good ol’ water.

Stepping up to higher counts

Studies everywhere show that if you wear a pedometer and set daily goals, you become more active than people that don’t wear one. Pedometers are quirky little critters, because they seem to have an almost magical power of motivation about them. When you wear one, it’s like entering a contest with yourself. You clip your pedometer on every morning, and when you glance at it at noon, you think, “I gotta do something to get my steps in — I’m lagging today.” After work, when you stop at the grocery store, you park your car in the back of the lot and make a couple extra trips around the perimeter of the grocery store with your cart just to get your steps in for the day. I’m telling you, this little device works like a charm!

After your first week, begin to set new goals for yourself based on your baseline number of steps. Don’t set yourself up for failure. Set realistic and achievable goals, and then reward yourself for reaching them. The average person takes about a minute to walk 100 steps. So figure out your schedule, see if you can work in a couple five or ten minute walks several times a day, and begin scheming how you can increase your steps. At first, set your goal to increase your steps by 200 each day. When you get comfortable with that, challenge yourself and up the ante. Just one little step at a time can add up to giant steps in your active lifestyle, making you happier and healthier.

Here are some easy ways to sneak more steps into your day:

Clean the house.

March in place while you watch the news.

Walk around the house while you chat on the phone.

Walk the indoor perimeter of the mall with a friend.

Take the stairs rather than the elevator or escalator.

Park your car at the back of the lot to lengthen your walk to the building.

Walk around the airport while you’re waiting to board.

Walk your dog (or a neighbor’s dog).

Make an appointment at work with a coworker for a walking meeting.

Don’t get discouraged if you don’t have time for a 30-minute stroll. And don’t get caught up in negative self-talk. If you can take 10 minutes out of your morning schedule and 10 minutes in the afternoon to walk, you’ve already stacked up 20 minutes for the day! Moving for 20 minutes does more than just enable you to burn calories during that particular walking session. You also raise your metabolic rate and continue to burn calories after you’re done walking. You’re building muscle mass, improving the strength in your joints, increasing your flexibility, promoting strong bones, and enhancing the health of your heart. Maintaining muscle during weight loss is key to helping your body burn even more calories. (See more on moving and your metabolism in Chapter 2.)

If you like to take long walks and you’re an avid reader, enjoy the outdoors, and catch up on your reading: Try some books on tape while you’re stepping. You’ll want to keep walking just to find out how your book ends!

Overcoming obesity

You can help this troubled, overweight world even if you’re not obese. Make a commitment to help others. If you’ve lost the weight you wanted to lose, share with other people how you got there. No one likes to feel alone, so here are some ideas for giving your support to others:

Form small support groups at work, at church, with friends, or even among your own family members. Set up a group of carb-conscious, pedometer-stepping buddies.

Give a friend or relative a pedometer as a birthday gift. Make a list of people you love and give them a pedometer for Christmas. What better way to show someone how much you really care than to say, “I want you to live longer and be healthy because I love you.”

Join groups online that are doing pedom-eter walking. You can find and give support and friendship as well as join in some interesting competition online. And you don’t have to keep a notebook log of your daily steps, it’s simple and easy to log your steps every day online.

Using the buddy system

Recruit one of your low-carb lifestyle friends to go pedometer walking with you. You can socialize while you’re walking and stacking up steps on your pedometer. Maybe there’s someone at work you’d like to get to know better. Invite him to take a walk with you during your 10-minute morning break. Careful, it could be habit forming.

Including others in your healthy and active low-carb lifestyle efforts helps make you accountable. Having someone to share your achievements with makes them even more meaningful. And having someone to share the troubling times with is uplifting and encouraging, and that person often gives you the fight you need to keep going.

Weighing in with BMI

Calculating your body mass index, known as BMI, is another tool for you to use on the path towards a healthy low-carb lifestyle and all-around wellness. Expert findings report that BMI provides a better assessment of whether you’re overweight than you can get from simply taking a look at your scale because it’s determined using a gender-neutral ratio that accounts for both height and weight. How do you determine your BMI? Just plug your numbers into this equation:

BMI = (W/H²) × 705

Well, a bit of translation may be in order: Take your weight (in pounds) divided by your height (in inches, squared) and multiply that by 705. Or you can take the even easier approach of visiting www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi for a handy calculator in which simply plug in a few numbers, press a button, and get your results. After you have your BMI number, you can determine where weight falls in the grand scheme of things:

Depending on where your numbers fall, you could be at a higher risk for chronic diseases such as type-2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke, and some types of cancer.

From these calculations you can make assessments as to your current state of health and consult with your doctor about a plan to start lowering your risk rates immediately. You’re already on the right track pursuing your healthy low-carb active lifestyle. However, never take your own calculations or what you read in any book as gospel. Check with your doctor.