If you’re avoiding exercise because you see it as an “all or nothing”, start thinking instead about ways to make your current lifestyle just a bit more active. You don’t need to go to the gym three times a week to see health benefits.

Just get moving

Cranky Fitness had a great guest post from Drew Harvey of Diet Tired a few days ago. Drew wrote:

What constitutes the best form of exercise for weight loss? Here is a shocker: anything that gets you moving on a regular, preferably daily, basis.

Although, as Drew points out, weight loss does depend on calories in being less than calories out, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the best sort of exercise is the one that burns the most calories. After all, what do you think will have more benefits for your body in the long run: six months’ worth of daily half-hour walks, or two weeks of daily gym sessions followed by five and a half months where you’ve been completely put off exercising?

Something which “gets you moving on a regular, preferably daily, basis” is something that fits easily around the rest of your life. I’m a big fan of:

• Having an active commute (even if the only way to do that is to get off the bus a couple of stops early, or to park your car further from work).
• Escaping from the office for your full lunch hour, and enjoying a relaxing walk – or working off some energy with a quick jog, cycle ride or gym session
• Making activity something fun that involves friends or family members.

Exercise boosts willpower

It can be depressing to watch the numbers slowly tick round on the calorie-counter at the gym or on your heart rate monitor. When I’ve been sweating away from thirty minutes, it’s galling to be told I’ve only burnt as many calories as there are in a Wispa (one of my favourite types of chocolate bar…)

However, I know that exercise for me isn’t just about the calories I burn – it’s also about the calories I don’t eat. As Drew writes:

It is a well known fact that people eat healthier on days that they are active. By simply being active and consequently feeling good about yourself, you decrease your daily calorie intake through better food choices.

I’ve definitely seen the truth of this in my own attempts to live healthily. When I go to the gym, take a long walk, or commute by bike, I’m much more ready to resist that cookie or slice of cake – because I don’t want to undo all my hard work. And if I’m exercising, I know that I need to eat extra “good” food (protein, unrefined carbs) for sustained energy during my workout, instead of skimping on lunch then wasting calories on chocolate.

How will you get active?

Try to find some way of being active every day – even if it’s just a half-hour stroll after dinner, or a quick power walk during your lunch hour. You might find some of these articles useful for further inspiration:

• Exercising: Before and after work
• Exercising: In your lunch hour
• Five ways to find ten minutes to exercise
• Five reasons to walk more
• Exercise: Getting started, staying motivated, seeing improvements

Something I’ve been thinking about over the past week is this post from You On A Diet: Lose Weight By Logging. Whenever I’ve successfully dieted, I’ve done it by writing down what I eat, and the calories. However, as I’m sure many of you will have found, weighing foods and working out calories can be a pain – especially when you’re busy.

Plus, if your goal is to eat more healthily – not necessarily to lose weight – then tracking calories is often unnecessary, and can lead you to concentrate too much on a number than on getting a balanced diet.

Just log what you eat … and lose weight?

You On A Diet explained that:

It started with a group of researchers who were going to conduct a study on a new diet plan. The first instruction they gave the participants was to keep a detailed food journal. The point was to gather information in order to have a good idea of what people were eating on their usual routine, then see what was going to have to change. But the subjects came back in two weeks and surprised the team: they had already lost weight!

I can definitely echo this in my own experience: writing things down invariably makes me think twice about having a second cookie or an unnecessary snack. I don’t need to make any efforts to deliberately restrict my food intake, and I certainly don’t go hungry – but I do find myself making more sensible choices.

For the past week, I’ve been logging everything I eat, with some vague health goals in mind (“eating at least five fruit and veg a day” , “drinking less alcohol” and “cutting down on sugar”). I found that:

• I ate about the same amount, but made healthier choices. Rather than having a small sandwich and some chocolate at lunch time, I’d have a larger sandwich and skip the chocolate!
• On days when I was out or busy, I made the effort to eat enough fruit and veg.
• My chocoholic tendencies were noticeably diminished!

I’ve lost about half a pound, too, which is pretty good for me (I’m five foot two, and well within my “healthy” weight range, so I don’t tend to lose weight easily.)

Do try this at home

If you’ve been avoiding keeping a food diary because you can’t cope with all the faff of weighing things, counting calories and guesstimating restaurant meals – just keep a very simple log. Write down everything you eat, with portion sizes like “2 thick slices of bread” or “a small side salad”, rather than getting obsessive about grams and calories. You’ll almost certainly find that keeping the log vastly reduces your snacking urges, and helps you to concentrate on healthy choices.

It might also help to set specific goals or targets. Some great ones are:

• Five fruit and veg each day
• Six glasses of water per day
• Reducing caffeine intake
• Reducing alcohol intake
• Cutting down on sugary snacks
• Only having certain foods (for me, chocolate!) on certain days

Check out one of my early posts on The Office Diet where you can download several different types of food diary template – the “Food and mood” one is particularly useful if you’re an emotional eater, as you can jot down notes on how you were feeling during the day.

So how can you distract yourself from the “bad” sort of snacking? Here’s what to do when the cookie jar is calling your name:

If you’re genuinely hungry, eat something healthy

Don’t suffer through hunger pangs when you’re trying to lose weight. If your stomach is rumbling, have a healthy snack. Fruit, crispbreads, a small sandwich, or even a handful of mixed dried fruit and nuts (go easy on this, though) are great options.

Not eating when you’re hungry can eventually lead your body into “starvation mode”, where it clings to fat as stubbornly as possible. And it can also lead you to binging when you finally do eat, because you’re so ravenous.

Get busy – race through your to-do list

If you’re not hungry, chances are you’re thinking about snacking because you’re bored. Most office-workers inevitably have the occasional time when the clock seems to be dragging v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y through the day.

Even if there’s nothing urgent in your in-tray, make a list of all those little nagging jobs you want to get done – then see how fast you can get through them! Set a timer, and challenge yourself.

Go for a walk

Sometimes, the urge to snack is a passing craving for some particular item. If you feel you really must have chocolate, or chips, or whatever your snack-food vice is, then go for a half-hour walk. By the time you’re back, you’ll probably have lost interest in the snack.

Of course, unless you have a very accommodating boss, it may not be possible to wander off for half-an-hour whenever the urge to snack arises. Instead, take a five minute break to walk to the water cooler, or spend some time making phone calls (you won’t want to eat and talk on the phone at the same time, so this is a good way to beat those cravings.)

Further reading

That “snacky mood” can be hard to beat, so here’s some more articles on The Office Diet which might help you conquer it:

• Five great tricks for the healthy office worker’s mind – learn about the “I’ll just…” tricks. These aren’t just for snacking, they’re also for general peace of mind in the office.
• Stop workplace boredom and stress from ruining your diet – being bored, or being stressed, can lead to unnecessary snacking on unhealthy foods.
• Having a perfect dieting day, every day – don’t ruin your day part-way by succumbing to snacks – and don’t let it all go pear-shaped after dinner, either!

For more tips, tricks and advice, make sure you’re getting free updates from The Office Diet – grab the RSS feed, or pop your email address into the box on the top right of this page to get each new post straight to your inbox.

If you can put off a habit change / life change until a new year rolls around, that’s a sign that you just don’t have much motivation to make it happen. You may wish it would happen, but you don’t really want to do the work to get it (and that’s why you’ve been putting it off). You may have a whole new year ahead of you, but you’ve still got all the old desires that will keep you trapped in the place you’re at now.
- Why Your Resolutions Never Change Anything (And The One Thing That Does), Dave Navarro

The above quote really struck me earlier in this week, especially when I read a piece by one of my fellow writers on Diet-Blog, suggesting that would-be-dieters should start right now and get ahead for the new year.

Do you want to make changes in your life, but think it’s not worth getting started till January? An awful lot of people go on diets at the start of the year (just look at Google Trends for the word ‘diet’ to see the peak every January). And lots of us take up impressive fitness regimes, try to overhaul our lives, start hunting for a new job in earnest …

… and all too often, this motivation fizzles out by mid-January.

You don’t need to wait until some arbitrary date to begin working on your goals.

All you need to do is:

• Be clear about what it is you want to do (e.g. “eat five fruit and veg a day”)
• Work out all the reasons you want to make this change
• Write them down (you’ll be much more likely to succeed)
• Figure out the first step – make it a little bit challenging, but not too daunting
• Get started!

Not feeling motivated enough? Here are a few popular health/fitness related resolutions, and reasons to start on them today.

• Losing weight – if you’re overweight, you could easily be 6lbs lighter by Christmas. You’ll have more energy, you’ll feel great about yourself, and you won’t be so tempted to have a complete pig-out at every Christmas party.
• Eating more healthily – you’ll see the benefits every day with increased energy and zest for life, if you make an effort to cut out high-fat, high-sugar foods. And with Christmas just around the corner, you’ll want all the energy you can get…
• Exercising regularly – why not get into good habits now? If you feel a bit down during the dark winter months, exercise is a great way to lift your mood. Regular exercise is even prescribed as a treatment for mild-moderate depression.
• Quitting smoking – put the money you’re saving in a jar, and spend it in the January sales on a fantastic outfit, or that new gadget you wish you could afford. And, of course, you’ll be enjoying the benefits of clearer lungs long before Christmas begins.So what are you waiting for? Get ahead of the game, and start your New Years’ resolution today!If you want to know a bit more about me and about why I started The Office Diet, you might like to read an interview with me on the “Ditch Diets, Live Light” site.

So what can you find on You On A Diet?

Home page

The home page has several nice features, including a handy BMI calculator – which works for both imperial and metric measurements – so that you can check whether you’re overweight or at a healthy weight.

My one reservation about this was that if suggested considering a supplement (diet pill) if you are overweight. I would strongly advise trying to lose weight by simply eating more healthily and exercising: you don’t risk side effects, and you’ll be building up good habits for life.

You On A Diet also has a “Blurb of the month” on the homepage, linking to a site or resource that they especially recommend. I was delighted to hear that they’re linking to my Dieting Basics ebook throughout November! (Have you got your copy yet?)

At the bottom of the homepage, you’ll find their latest blog posts, and weight-loss related videos from You Tube. Great for a quick coffee-break!

Diet Reviews

You On A Diet usefully reviews a lot of popular diets; you can access these by clicking on “Lifestyle Diets”, “Meal Based” or “Supplements” in the orange navigation bar at the top – depending on what sort of diet you’re interested in. Rather than wasting money on the latest celebrity-endorsed book, check You On A Diet first to see what their verdict is.

The reviewers aren’t afraid to speak their mind, and suggest the dangers or pitfalls of a particular diet plan:

The recommended daily calorie intake for the Kimkins diet is set at a dangerous 700 calories a day which is well below the recommended level set by medical practitioners to maintain good health.
- The Kimkins Diet

But they’ll praise diets which promote sensible eating habits – and where you get to enjoy your food!

The Sonoma Diet™ comes with plenty of guidance. The food enjoyed in this diet makes you feel like you’re not on a diet at all. The key is what you eat and when you eat it. Feedback from our readers refreshingly stated they no longer needed to have cheat meals or craved for fatty foods when using this diet.
- The Sonama Diet

Blog

You On A Diet has recently started publishing regular blog posts (click “Diet Blog” in the orange bar, or “Home” if you’re on the blog section itself). These articles deal with a range of weight-loss and healthy eating topics. Here are a few that I particularly enjoyed reading:

Lose Twenty Five Pounds Without Dieting

Remember, all it takes is saving 250 calories a day to lose half a pound a week: That’s over 25 pounds a year—probably faster than you gained it!

Some great tips here on how to cut 250 calories a day without even noticing. This could be as switching to skimmed milk in your latte, swapping a chocolate bar for a granola bar, and making some canny choices at lunch and dinner.

Are These Calories Worth It?

Think before you eat and decide whether you will really enjoy the food and feel good about eating it; whether you would rather lose weight by passing up on those fattening treats; and whether you are willing to be more active to burn the calories off.

I often ask myself whether the calories in something are worth it – sure, one of those giant cookies on sale at the canteen might go nicely with my cup of tea, but I know the heavy dose of sugar won’t help my afternoon productivity much! There are some great tips here on considering whether the enjoyment of something really justifies the calories.

Quick Weight Loss – Why We Love to Hate It

Without question one of the most dreaded effects of quick weight loss programs is the fact that 9 out of 10 will gain all the weight back.

Like The Office Diet, and Diet Blog, You On A Diet promotes sustainable, healthy weight loss to reach a realistic goal weight – not crash-dieting in order to become a stick-figure. This article is a great reminder of why fast weight loss is really bad for you.

Why not check out You On A Diet today? I’ve added them to my list of Recommended Reads, and if you want to get all their posts, you can simply subscribe to their RSS feed. There’s also a newsletter that you can sign up for on the site – look for the envelope-style icon and yellow post-it note that appears on the top right of your screen when you visit the site.

Do any of these situations sound familiar?

• You’re making a real effort to cut back on sugary, unhealthy snacks, but a colleague has brought in home made cookies and is insisting you try one.
• It’s Friday and everyone’s going out for lunch. You’re not especially hungry and really fancy a big salad. A couple of your workmates start telling you that you need to “eat properly”, and ask “you’re not on some silly diet, are you?”
• One of the girls in your office is popping out to the shops on a “chocolate run”. She goes round the room asking everyone what they want. You’ve just had lunch, and you wouldn’t have been thinking about food until they put it into your head … but now you really fancy a mars bar…

There are two types of peer pressure that you need to deal with, internal and external pressure. In many ways, the first is harder to conquer!

Internal peer pressure

So what do I mean by “internal” peer pressure? I mean the urge to go along with the crowd, the part of us which thinks, “Since Bob’s having steak and chips, I will too, I don’t want to miss out.”

Internal peer pressure is what makes you reach for a cookie when everyone else is getting one, even though no-one’s asked or told you to join in. It’s what makes you order a salad when all the other women round the table are, even though you really want the lasagne.

It’s natural to take our cues on appropriate behaviour from other people. Experts think this is why, if you have a lot of overweight friends, you’re likely to become overweight too. On the flip side, it can also be why some offices seem filled with stick-thin women; everyone feels pressured into losing weight, whether they want to or not.

So how can you get round internal peer pressure? There are no easy answers, but a couple of things that help are:

• Asking yourself “Do I really want this?” – or are you just joining in with everyone else?
• Reminding yourself that it’s fine to be different.
• Practising going against the crowd; everyone else is digging into the chocolates, but you don’t. All your colleagues seem to be on some faddy new diet, but you’re sticking with your long-term healthy eating plans.

External peer pressure

The more obvious form of peer pressure is external. This happens when someone says, “Oh, go on, have a cookie, one won’t hurt.” Or, worse, “Don’t you want to try one of my cookies? I spent the whole of yesterday evening baking them.”

It’s easy to feel manipulated or pressured into something we don’t want to do. Practise saying “no” to people. That might mean learning how to (gently) turn down a cookie. It might mean having the confidence to say “I’m not eating chocolate at the moment.” If people get nosy about your diet, or if they start demanding to know why you ate a cookie on Tuesday if you’re not eating one today, then simply say something like, “Don’t worry about me, I know what I’m doing!” and change the subject.

Remember that your body, your diet and your health are your concern (and perhaps your doctor’s) – it’s nosy and even rude of other people to pester you about these things.

• Don’t go on a diet just because someone in the office suggests that you should join their weight-loss group.
• Don’t feel that you have to “give in” and have a cookie when everyone else is. Get into the habit of saying “no thanks” straight away – habits are stronger than willpower!
• Don’t look for excuses. I know that it’s easy to blame other people if you’re overweight, but ultimately, you’re the only person putting food into your mouth.

Get tips and advice from The Office Diet three times a week by grabbing the RSS feed or registering for email updates (put your email address in the box on the top right).

 (I’ll have a full post here on The Office Diet tomorrow, so pop back then, too..)

Setting goals to improve your daily life

I’ve been reading a very insightful book called Personal Development for Smart People, by one of my favourite bloggers, Steve Pavlina. (Look out for a full review at some point soon on The Office Diet!) His words about goals in chapter three really struck me a few days ago:

“The point of goal setting is to improve the quality of your present-moment reality. … Many people set goals and then assume the path to reach them will require suffering and sacrifice.”

I think there’s a lot in this which particularly applies to dieters. We’re often in the mindset that diet = deprivation, that we have to go through “suffering and sacrifice” in order to shape up, to lose those unwanted pounds, or to improve our health.

What if, instead, we looked at a diet as something to improve our life today? How would this change the way you approach your dieting and the goals which you set for yourself?

Diet goals for today, not the future

For me, this means:

Getting regular exercise. I know that I feel less stressed, more “balanced” and more energetic if I go to the gym. Those aren’t effects which I need to wait months and months for … they happen straight away!

Eating foods I enjoy. Please don’t force yourself to eat things you don’t really like, just because you’re “on a diet”. If you think you don’t like any healthy foods, you just need to experiment a bit more!

Feeling in control. Would you rather be in control of what you eat, or would you rather food was controlling you? I like to be able to say “no” to chocolate when I know I’ve already eaten enough, or when I’m planning an indulgent dinner.

Having time to relax over meals. I love eating a leisurely meal with my boyfriend, or just taking some time in the middle of the day to browse through a magazine or book whilst having lunch. If you’re cutting down on what you eat, make sure you give yourself time to enjoy your meals to the full!

So instead of having the goal to “be 10lbs lighter by Christmas”, why not try setting goals like these?

• “I want to have more energy and enthusiasm every day.”
• “I want to know that I can eat chocolate if I want – and that I can turn it down if I want.”
• “I want to sit down and spend time over my meals.”
• “I want to try three new foods every week.”

For regular advice, tips and ideas to help you live a healthy lifestyle, get The Office Diet straight to your RSS reader, or subscribe by email (top right corner).

Lucid Dreaming For Slackers on Cranky Fitness is a really fascinating read. I’ve been keen to try out lucid dreaming for a while but it always seemed like way too much effort. This is the Crabby McSlacker way! (If you’re wondering what the heck “lucid dreaming” is, it’s nothing too wacky – it just means being aware you’re dreaming whilst you’re asleep, and being able to control your dream.)

The cool thing: it’s a learnable skill. There’s a set of steps to follow, and if you do them, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually start having dreams where you’re aware you’re in a dream and you even get to control what happens.

The Skinny of Raw Food, a guest post on A Daring Adventure is another interesting one. My scepticism about anything that would involve not eating chocolate knows no bounds, so this was a great piece that dealt with a good few preconceptions I had about raw foodists.

Obviously if an apple has been burnt to a crisp there’s not going to be much goodness left. Eating raw is just taking that to the other end of the logical extreme - the closer to just being picked (or fallen!) from the tree, the better it’s going to be for your body.

What’s Holding You Back on The BridgeMaker was a very insightful read for me. I still have some hang-ups about body image and self-esteem, even though I’ve been a healthy weight – and reasonably fit – for years. This piece helped me pinpoint why.

Leave the Past Behind. What happened in the past must stay in the past. It can not define your present value or worth unless you allow it. When you make the choice to move forward, you are also making the decision to live in this moment, in the here and now. Consider what’s ahead; what’s next in your life and place your energy in discovering more of that. 

Hope you enjoy those pieces as much as I did!

And don’t forget that you can receive free updates by email (pop your address in on the top right), or straight to your RSS reader, if you don’t want to miss out on any of The Office Diet’s posts.

Most people who have exercised intensely have felt it. Your muscles ache; you may get cramp or even feel like your muscles could light the bonfire on November 5th. “Damn you lactic acid, I wanted to do even more!”

For many, the perception still remains that lactic acid is a ‘waste product’ resulting from intense exercise and that such accumulation acts as one of or even the main cause of exercise fatigue. This view dates back to experiments completed in the 1930s by AV Hill and others, resulting in the belief that lactic acid was only produced where there was no (anoxic) or too little (hypoxic) oxygen available to the muscle due to the intensity of the exercise.

The facts about lactic acid

However, since the 1970s there has been an academic revolution on the theory of lactic acid and its role within exercise. Unfortunately, it appears such knowledge has not disseminated into the wider public audience, something I will now attempt to address.

Before doing so, it is important to quickly outline some science stuff. When lactic acid accumulates in the body the vast majority of it ‘breaks up’ almost immediately into a salt called lactate (La-) and hydrogen ions (H+). Therefore, when exercise scientists try to measure lactic acid in someone (as often happens for professional athletes), they are more than likely measuring lactate. It is for those reasons that the terms lactic acid and lactate are very often (here also) are interchangeable.

Lactate acid as a fuel

So then, if lactate is not a cause of fatigue, what does it do? Firstly, it is important to point out that the body is almost constantly producing and using lactate as a fuel. Yes, you read correctly – a fuel.

George Brooks, an American scientist, is an eminent researcher in this area. His experiments have shown that the brain, kidneys and liver use lactate as a fuel. Furthermore, the heart is an active lactate consumer with one study showing that up to 60% of the fuel used by the heart is lactate. Moreover, it is now widely accepted that a ‘cell to cell’ lactate shuttle exists. In other words, lactate that is produced in one type of muscle fibre is then used by another type of fibre for fuel. Other studies have demonstrated that lactate can actually be converted (by the liver) back in to glucose or glycogen to be reused by other tissues. In that case is lactate the saviour of all our exercise problems? Well, not really but to demonstrate this, we need to talk science again briefly.

What causes fatigue during exercise?

Although lactate is almost constantly produced and used (cleared) within the body, when we exercise intensely (i.e. 85% of maximum and upwards – hence anaerobically), lactate will accumulate in the muscles. Basically, the rate of production outstrips the rate of clearance and a build up occurs. In the 1930s, it was felt that this accumulation was the main cause of fatigue. However, we know now this not to be true but what is happening?

One school of thought was that the hydrogen ions (H+) that were released caused a decrease in pH in the muscle and therefore this acidosis, as opposed to lactate, was the cause of fatigue. To support this, some experiments have shown that Bicarbonate supplementation has helped increase power output in high intensity exercise suggesting it acts as a pH buffer in the muscle.

However, in contrast another study highlighted that the effect of acidosis previously thought to be implicated in fatigue had actually been described when the experiment was carried out at a non-physiological temperature. In other words, when the experiment was repeated at a temperature closer to the temperature of human muscle in exercise, the effect of acidosis was far less.

Confused? If so, you need not worry. Despite the vast amount of research being carried out into the cause of fatigue, scientists are still unable to pinpoint the exact physiological reason for muscle fatigue. Yes, various components are implicated but as yet, the search for this Holy Grail is still a work in progress.

What is now clear, however, is that lactic acid / lactate is not an exercise party pooper. In fact, it is an extremely important metabolic intermediary within the body that has many different functions. In fact, in a 2007 article in the Sports Medicine journal, George Brooks suggests that more research is required into how lactate maybe able to help marathon runners improve their performance. Viva la revolution.