2007

First, if you have no interest in running, read this anyway. The principles discussed here apply to any kind of exercise. If you want to get better, this part's huge.

Here's the good news: There is a magic pill available for you. The pill melted fat off my body and keeps it off. It reduced my resting heart rate, an indicator of heart health, from above a hundred to the low forties. Medicine is full of controversy, but medical experts of all stripes agree that my pill provides protection from heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. It even helps me keep from catching colds, the flu, and a multitude of other illnesses. If I do get sick, my pill makes the illness short-lived and much less severe than those who don’t take it. My medication is an extremely effective sleep aid. The pill helps me go to sleep quickly, and I awaken fully refreshed and ready to go. My magical pill has improved my mental health tremendously. When I finish taking it, my anxiety is relieved and any depression I might be feeling that day is lightened. Since I’ve taken this pill, my whole outlook on life has gotten a whole lot better.

How much would you pay for my pill? Sorry, it’s not for sale. No insurance policy covers it. In fact, you can’t buy my medicine for any price. At least monetarily. The pill’s dispenser requires only one thing – an hour of your time every day and some effort. That’s all.

Here's the bad news: My pill is called exercise. Exercise does all that. I’m not kidding. It really does. But, even though it’s right there for the taking, few people accept the gift. That’s because the hour you have to give up each day is hard. I've looked at a ton of weight loss and exercise forums. Posters complain that they are exercising and not losing weight. Here's the problem: They aren't exercising hard enough.

Brisk Walking is Enough: Since 1993 the National Weight Control Registry has followed over 5000 people who've lost at least thirty pounds or more and kept it off for more than a year. The actual average loss is 66 pounds and the average time is 5.5 years. The range is 30 to 300 pounds for from one year to 66 years. 94% of the participants increased exercise with the most frequently reported exercise being walking for an hour a day. Other studies on the same population indicate the walking is brisk. To burn calories, you need to walk hard enough to go into your target heart rate. To be sure yo do that, invest from fifty to a hundred bucks in a heart rate monitor. (Buy one that has a chest strap.)

For Maximum Effectiveness, It's Good to Hurt: The harder you work, the more calories you burn.There are some esoteric calculations and theories suggesting fat percentage that is burned decreases if your heart rate gets too high. Don't worry about that. If your percentage falls off, total calories burned is still high.

I want to share some of my story with you. I run for forty-five minutes five days a week and twenty-five minutes on the two days I lift weights. People often comment that they see me running and say, “I wish I could do that, but I just don’t enjoy it.”

Enjoy it?

I can't say I enjoy it. Running hurts. Sometimes my mind will get distracted and I forget how my muscles hurt and my lungs hurt, but soon I’ll remember what I’m doing and I’m hurting again. If I ran to find pleasure while I was doing it, I would have quit a long time ago. Doesn’t happen.

I can hear you now. “So to lose weight and be healthy, I have to live a life of pain? That’s not worth it.”

It's OK to hurt!

No! Listen up. I didn’t say “pain,” y’all. I said, “Hurt.” Big difference. Huge difference. Pain is debilitating. Hurting isn’t. Hurting is unpleasant. Hurting is something you work through in order to get something you want. Hurting is something you tolerate and come to appreciate because the hurt you feel for forty-five minutes makes the other twenty-three hours and fifteen minutes of each day and night so much better.

That’s not to say there is no enjoyment in running. There is. In fact, there’s way more than just enjoyment in running. I love running when I’m finished, and I’m sitting on the porch with my face pounding and a lake of sweat pooling at my feet. I love it when I’m on the cardiologist’s treadmill and I’m setting a new office record for time and speed during my annual nuclear stress test. I love it when I put on my size 34 pants, six sizes less than before I started running. I love it when the run’s over and that mean thing somebody said to me earlier in the day just doesn’t matter anymore.

Running is my thing, so that’s what I talk about here. Running may not be your thing. Whatever you do, if you want exercise to melt fat and keep it off and improve your physical and mental health, you need to sweat. You need to get your heart going fast. Gardening’s great. You’ll burn some calories. It distracts your mind from your troubles. Your muscles may hurt when you’re done. All that’s good, but listen to this: you’re not doing much to burn calories. You’re not doing much to lose weight. You’re not doing enough to improve your mental health significantly.

The best exercise regime for losing weight is aerobics, or cardio training. Reistance training is good to build and tone muscles and should be part of your exercise plan, but it doesn't burn calories at a high rate. Cardio includes running, jogging, swimming, and walking fast enough to get the heart rate up. The goal is to work hard enough to burn calories at a high rate. The harder you work, the more you burn. Strength training includes weightlifting, hydraulic/elastic resistance, and isometrics. The goal is to work hard enough to build muscle and tone it. You'll see references that say muscles burn calories when they’re just sitting around, so the more you have, the more calories you burn. While that's true, the number of additional calories muscles burn while sitting around is miniscule. The main purpose for resistance training is toning.

Read this and memorize it: If I want to get rid of a fat belly, know what works and doesn’t work. Sit-ups (crunches), twisting the waist,, isometrics, or any other “ab” exercise do not reduce belly fat. Rolling on a big ball doesn’t burn fat either. You might build muscle in the belly, but nobody will see it because all that fat is hiding the muscle. Never forget: To burn fat I have to work harder than that.

Remember the secret revealed in More About Weight Loss: To lose weight you have to burn more calories than you consume. To maintain your weight, you have to maintain the proper balance of calories you consume and calories you burn. Exercise is a huge element of that secret.

My free medicine there for the taking, but few take advantage of it and those who do often give it up after a while. How can you change that? I’ll share some things that have helped me stick with it. Once, again, I’m calling these rules. They’re not optional for me.

The bottom line: As I write this, I’m approaching my sixties and my body is in a state of decline. I can’t stop that. My hair is largely gone and my shoulders are still sloped, as they have been from birth. I’m no chiseled, muscled specimen of a man. Doesn’t matter. I feel great. I am seldom sick. I spend the vast majority of my life in a state of contentment and serenity. A large part of that comes from developing a life long commitment to eating right and exercising effectively. I can’t emphasize this too strongly about eating right and exercising right – no matter how much it might hurt to give up cookies or run up hills, it’s worth it.