Featured Article: Walk Hard. Walk Easy. Repeat.

I've been preaching the benefits of interval training to my clients for many years, and evidence has been steadily mounting that working with intervals is the most effective way to increase cardiovascular health and sustain long-term calorie burn. In other words, it can help you lose weight more easily and takes much less time than most of us spend at the gym when trying to drop pounds.

I get push back on this when people are afraid to run or push harder. They assume the difficult intervals must be punishing in order to be effective. We now know that this is not the case. Intervals can be effective when limited entirely to walking... slow, then fast, slow and fast again.

An article came out in the New York Times this week, Walk Hard. Walk Easy. Repeat. by Gretchen Reynolds, detailing the results of a study out of Japan by Dr. Hiroshi Nose. The study shows that walkers who stuck with gentle interval workouts achieved significantly "improved aerobic fitness, leg strength, and blood pressure readings."

Workouts don't have to hurt to be helpful, but they should be at least a little bit challenging if you want to see measurable health benefits. Just pick up the pace now and then. Take a walk!

Take a Load Off: Rising Above Weight Loss Mind Games

(The following article appeared in the Nashville Scene on January 15, 2015)

I've been a personal trainer for more than a decade, but I never felt the need to maintain a trainer's stereotypically muscle-bound physique. In fact, I carried a little extra weight around as a badge of honor, 20 subversive pounds that proved my commitment to quality of life over superficial concerns. That was my story, and I was sticking to it.

My clients didn't seem to care one way or another. They work and play too much, just like me, and we try to focus on health and balance over inches lost. But the "quality of life" I so proudly defended for myself wasn't the result of eating freely and joyfully with people I loved. Instead, it was the product of excessive midnight snacks that took the edge off my anxiety as I drifted off to sleep.

I felt heavy, not liberated, and as I sat in a wooden pew at my grandmother's funeral last summer, I took a hard look at how I wanted to feel walking around on planet Earth while I still had the chance. I didn't want to be weighed down anymore.

Physically, I knew what to do. Eat better. Move more. It doesn't take a Ph.D. But mentally and emotionally, sticking to that path — for real this time — was a comedy of errors, a pageant of psychological acrobatics. I decided to make a study of it, not only to document my progress, but to examine with surgical precision what had interrupted my weight-loss attempts in the past. I wanted to understand what forces were hijacking my own best efforts and those of my clients just when we were starting to make progress.

As the weight came off, the difference in how I felt physically was breathtaking, but I could have predicted that. What I didn't anticipate was how difficult it would be for my brain to adjust to living in this exhilarating yet unfamiliar new body. My confidence grew and collapsed unpredictably, leaving me constantly in search of stability, but the only stability I knew would involve regaining the weight.

When I lost the first five pounds, I began to feel out of sorts. I was awkward in conversation and prodded by nagging self-doubt, which didn't make sense. I should have felt great, but I had grown accustomed to my body being a certain way in the world — wearing clothes, sitting at my desk, walking to the hardware store. Just because I didn't like tugging at my waistband on a daily basis didn't mean I wasn't used to it. When we're used to something, it's decidedly weird to let it go. As my shape shifted, my identity came loose a bit, and it threw me.

I had to get OK with being awkward for a little while. I felt like a teenage girl growing into oversized boobs — uncomfortable, but hopeful that the payoff would be good. If I could recognize that my foibles were fleeting and not nearly as bad as I imagined them, I could avoid medicating my discomfort with food.

After hitting my goal weight and landing in a new body, I was haunted by a desire to look over my shoulder, as if the lost pounds were lurking in the shadows, waiting for an opportunity to rejoin me. It was victory punctuated by fear. I was terrified I'd be unable to hang onto the weight loss, and that fear brought with it the impulse to deprive myself of all things fun. After deprivation came rebellion and indulgence, echoes of the habits that kept me heavy in the first place.

When panic set in, instead of depriving or demeaning myself, I had to actively reach for the food and physical motion that had healed me months earlier. I had to identify which tangible actions reliably calmed my mind and strengthened my body.

Months after the weight was lost, periodically I would become convinced that I had gained it back. My clothes no longer felt effortlessly loose. The number on the scale was as low as ever, but I was still living in the same body. I had the same old lumps and bumps as always; they were just smaller.

Eventually, my new size stopped feeling otherworldly, magical, and came to feel just plain normal. That feeling of normalcy — which felt like a letdown — is actually a remarkable accomplishment. It means I redefined my comfort zone. The weight range where I feel "average" is now lower, which might seem mundane but is in fact extraordinary.

Even better than losing the weight, I found my way off of the psychological seesaw I'd been on for two decades, and I learned how to better help my clients do the same. Weight loss is a mind game more than a battle of the bulge. It should have been obvious to me that "success" would be a weird amalgam of awkwardness and triumph. It's been that way every other time I've succeeded at something new. Why should I expect weight loss to be any different? It feels nice to be at home in my own skin. And strange ... really, very strange.

The Pleasure Principle: Wellness Unhinged

I refrained from writing a New Year's post this year because I have two articles coming out this month on goal setting and weight loss - in support of what happens after the resolutions slip away. The weeks after New Year's are the ones most fraught with trouble. That first week is a cake walk compared to the rest. 

Below is my article appearing in The East Nashvillian. The basic premise: The way we're pursuing health and fitness is backwards. Bodies are best when utilized and pampered, not conquered. 

If you happen to be in Nashville, I detail countless resources at your fingertips. If not, you might get some ideas for practitioners and practices to seek out in your own area. Happy new year, everybody! Let's take better care this year, seek pleasure over pain... 

     When I was a sophomore in college, I had a professor who took the class outside for a friendly game of tag on the first day of school. Home base was a large oak tree situated at the far corner of an open courtyard. I eyeballed it from beneath the steps of a nearby building. I skulked and schemed and, when I saw an opening, took off running: chest out, chin up, legs pumping like my very life depended on it... more... 

This Winter, Give Yourself A Little Credit

It snowed this morning... too early in the season... but with it, the snow brought a sense of relief. The cold arrived, no longer hovering in the distance. 

I am renowned for being a devout sun worshiper who slips into oblivion each December, but the abrupt temperature drop this year brings with it an opportunity I've been waiting for. This winter I'll be taking my power back - and encouraging my clients to do the same.

I've trained countless strong, powerful women who handily maintain balance in most aspects of their lives. They take care of their jobs, bosses, lovers, friends, children, and four-legged babies. They show up for what matters. But when they finally get around to taking care of their own bodies - the muscle and bone that carries them through their lives - they write themselves off as relatively powerless. They set their physical wellbeing aside as a pain-in-the-ass luxury they may or may not get around to addressing sometime next year.

Graphic by @NancyVanReece

As the holidays approach and winter slides up under our skin, we have the power to make our bodies a priority, to get better and stronger in spite of - and in defiance of - the weather. We are not hapless victims of holiday parties, pumpkin pie, and egg nog. We are willing participants in our own health. 

Give yourself a little credit, and it will set you free from the tedious, predictable pattern of treating your body like a garbage disposal for the months of November and December and trying to beat it into submission come January. 

We all have the option to make a different choice at any time. If I were diagnosed with a degenerative disease tomorrow, I'm pretty sure I would eat better and get moving in every way I could to salvage my body and life. Change isn't necessarily comfortable or easy, but it is doable if it matters enough. 

Odds are you kick ass in many aspects of your days. You get things done, so give a little credit where credit is due. Your body is your greatest, most essential asset, and the power to make it better is yours. It's not about marathon training. There are a million ways to take better care. The easiest of which is to simply walk away from things that will make you feel like crap later.

And please stop trying to lose weight. Stop trying to shrink. Build muscle and flexibility. Take a minute to breathe and stretch. Make your presence known - broader, bigger, stronger. Bottom line, unless you want to live with the same tired, old discomfort for the rest of your life, doing something else, something different, is the only option. Your body and weight will follow.

Take just a little of the copious dedication and compassion you give so freely to others and direct it back at yourself. When you feel better - when you have more energy - there is so much more to give.

Heat Worship

(This article appears in the July/August 2014 issue of The East Nashvillian)

There should be a name for a mythical creature that thrives on the searing heat of summer, a vampire in reverse. If such a creature existed, I would be it. 

     Put me on a whitewashed, wooden deck at high noon in the thick of a southern heat wave. Give me a baseball cap to obscure my sunglass-laden eyes and a skirt to strategically hike up, gathered between my legs as I soak up the sun. Play Laguna Pai on whatever speakers you can find, and let the music of the water wash over us. I will not be movable. With each bead of sweat that takes the journey from the nape of my neck to the blanched territory below, I will dive deeper, sloughing off stress and anxiety as I go. 
     There is no freedom like the passage of a slow summer Saturday. Morning breaks with clarity beaming from the sky. There is caffeine in the mild heat of morning and the luxury to sit outside, waiting for an impulse of wakefulness to stir. High noon calls for cooling shade, and afternoon demands a nap. Evenings are exquisite, requiring not a single layer of long-sleeved cotton to keep even the most cold-blooded among us warm.
     And then there are the gatherings, a seemingly endless march of celebrations paying tribute to art and beer, spice and wine, each one with a live music soundtrack that pulses from city block to neighborhood bar to back-porch songwriter.
     East Nashville's very own Tomato Art Fest is the crown jewel of summer frivolity for those of us not inclined to spend an afternoon with the upper crust, wearing $300 hats. Forget the Derby. Give me a cacophony of band stages and earthen jewelry, foodies taking the day off from snobbery, and hipsters too sweaty to be hip.
     At last summer's Tomato Art Fest, I finished the 5K triumphant; lingered at the doggie fashion show; picked up a vintage purse along the way; and pet a baby owl who appeared to be watching the passing parade of tomato-adorned merrymakers with suspicion. I ended the day on my porch again, in the heat under the stars, with the sound of bands and their fans carousing a block away.
     Summer is expansive. It is for reaching beyond boundaries. It's a time of year when health comes naturally, as do revelry and abandon. With the heat comes a natural proclivity to eat cool, whole food, salads, fruit, and grains, supplemented with beer, white wine, and frozen concoctions. A grand and effortless balance.
     We step out of our houses when sunshine and music beckon, calling us forth and turning the inward chill of winter out. We share rhythms with strangers at outdoor concerts and raise our arms to the stars, wondering if it gets much better than this. We hover in the humidity.
     As someone who didn't discover until my 30's that I am a contented, card-carrying introvert, I am just now learning the additional, hidden value of summer. It brings a brilliant collection of social easements for solitary souls who might be most likely to spend the bulk of their time buried under dusty stacks of LPs or books. Beyond the wonderfulness of warm air, friends, family, and fresh food, there are built-in barriers erected to keep people like us comfortable where otherwise we might not be. 
     Hats and sunglasses allow for quiet, studied observation. Large festivals allow for anonymous wandering. If it takes all afternoon for me to choose whether to purchase a jade necklace or a pendant crafted from petrified wood, no one notices or cares. The energy around us is too forceful for anyone to focus on me and my existential crisis: stone or wood, stone or wood?
     And, finally, there is the music that spawns collective togetherness without requiring that a word be spoken.
     As Nashvillians, we make music in our basement studios year round, but summer pulls it out in the open, ripe for sharing. It reaches far beyond our pavilion and tomato stages. By the time the next summer solstice rolls around, lyrics and melodies written on Music City summer nights will make their way to AfrikaBurn and Roskilde, Bumbershoot and Pitchfork, uniting us all in daylight and rhythm.
     When winter returns, I will once again resume my bitter battle against the cold. I will wrap myself in layers upon layers of down and wool. My shoulders and chin will turn inward, and my belly will likely expand under the cover of night. But until then, I will savor the ease of summer, moving freely through the heat, sweaty and content. Wellness will come easily, steeped in vitamin D. I will find health by nature, not by force.
     These many months before temperatures drop below 60 at sundown, you will find me on my porch. If you come for a visit, bring music and settle in for the night. Know that my periodic silences are nothing more than passing prayers set adrift with a smile: May the heady days of summer last us all year. You and me and summer makes three.

WHEN You Eat Matters After All

Photo: blisstree.com

When I was studying nutrition at UCLA in the early 2000s, there was a generally accepted meme about food intake and weight loss: Calories in vs. Calories out. On first glance, it makes sense. That's really all that should matter, right? How much we eat verses how much we burn will determine how much we weigh. Except with a decade more of research at our disposal, that doesn't seem to be the case.

There is a fascinating article in the April issue of More Magazine. I wish I could link to it here, but I can't find it online. It's called Make Over Your Metabolism - by Arlene Weintraub. I think she's on to something.

Researchers have discovered that our bodies possess something called "clock genes" that control "essential metabolic processes such as the burning of fat." They activate in the morning and wind down later in the day. Our bodies are much more likely to store (rather than burn) dietary fat after 3 p.m. And the later it gets the worse it is. 

Ms. Weintraub references several studies where groups of participants ate equal numbers of calories but at different times of day. The people who front loaded their days, eating the most calories in the morning and tapering off later, lost significantly more weight than those who ate the same amount of food later.

I love eating late at night, always have, but a couple of months ago, I decided to start eating dinner at 6 instead of 8 p.m. and going to bed an hour earlier... a necessity to keep my sanity with a toddler in the house. Within weeks of doing this, I lost 8 pounds that I had been struggling with my entire adult life. It felt miraculous but was really just a matter of logistics.

We've always known that people who eat late at night tend to be heavier than those who don't, but most experts attributed that to eating more calories overall. People starve themselves all day and then can't control their food intake late at night. They gravitate toward calorie-dense, nutrient-scarce snacks, and eat mindlessly in front of the TV rather than at a table with other people. All of that likely holds true, but now it seems there's more to it than we thought. Later in the day, our cells actually can't burn those calories, particularly those that come in the form of fat.

The crappy part about this is we can't save up all of our calories for a cozy late-night snack fest and hope to come out even. 

The good part is that we have a new, tangible tool at our disposal, one that doesn't require in-depth analysis or calorie counting. It's straightforward for once... eat more earlier and less later. Dig it.

Turns Out Caffeine and Alcohol Can Help You Live Longer

60 Minutes did a piece this week on a groundbreaking study out of UC Irvine about what factors contribute to longevity. Specifically, which behaviors under our own control can help us live to 90 plus.

The story appears in two parts. Most interesting to me are the conclusions that drinking up to two alcoholic drinks and one to three caffeinated drinks per day can help you live longer. Drink up, people! And don't count on your vitamins to keep you young. They had no impact at all.

Photo courtesy of 60 Minutes

The researchers also discovered that being slightly overweight when you are "very old" can be protective and help you live longer. Don't get too excited though. Being overweight when you're young or middle-aged skews the other way. What they mean is that being frail can be harmful.

Of course, exercise is pretty much the best thing you can do to increase your longevity and improve your quality of life as you age. I know, I know... we're all young and will never get old. Except we will. 

So drink your coffee and booze, take a walk every day, and lift something heavy now and then. All things in moderation. Maybe we'll all take a bus trip to the vineyards together when we're old and still going strong. Let the strapping sommeliers show us around.

Living to 90 and Beyond - 60 Minutes

Press On

I just stumbled out of a cave and realized I hadn't written a blog post since February. Aside from the generic excuse that the weather was shit this year and I was merely trying to survive the sub-zero temperatures, I also spent the back half of this winter pouring energy into my clients and the Body Baggage groups, trying to keep them focused through the relentless cold. 

As they swirled around me, I watched as several of them took off running, the wind at their backs, life seemingly on their side. Several others caved in on themselves under the weight of stressful jobs and bad break-ups. 

Both groups eventually hit roadblocks. When things were going well, they had the tendency to become complacent, assuming it would always be that way... until it wasn't. When things were going badly, they gave up altogether, refusing to break a sweat and prostrating themselves before the altar of comfort food.

I, myself, got a few pieces of shit news recently that flattened me for a few weeks. I did a whole lot of whining about why things weren't working out or why I didn't have time to write or exercise. But the fact is, that's all they were, grand excuses convincingly concocted in my own mind. The fact is, if I can find 20 minutes in my day, I can write down a few words or complete a few quick exercises. 

I seem to always make space for Girls or Mad Men when I want to.

Eventually - meaning yesterday morning - I had to look up and remind myself that, however things are going, my clients and I really have only two choices. We can surrender to the heaviness in our lives, or we can press on, striving always to lighten up. 

The thought of succumbing to a life without writing, without creative cliff-jumping, in a stiff, unappreciated, overburdened body, took me to depths of depression I haven't seen in over a decade. I toyed with that darkness these past few weeks, but I can't choose it going forward. It's not a life I can bear living, especially by my own choice. 

So, I am hereby done pouting - at least for now, for this round. It is officially time to remove the cozy, tie-dyed, winter onesie and proceed.

Press on, people. The other option is no good.

Working Out But Still Not Losing Weight?

My article, Weight Loss Headlines and Better Health, was published today on Phil Lempert's website. He is the Food Trends Editor for The Today Show, and his Supermarket Guru newsletter provides a ton of good info on nutrition and what foods and products are trending.

The article is my response to a Huffington Post article entitled "Increased Exercise Doesn't Appear to Boost Calorie Intake After All." If you are tired of flashy, misleading headlines, if you are exercising and not losing weight, there is probably a reason and it probably has something to do with your diet. Click here for more!

The Biggest Loser Was The Biggest Loser. Why Are We Shocked and Outraged?

I don't watch The Biggest Loser, at least I haven't in many seasons, but the internet exploded last night with reaction to this year's winner, Rachel Frederickson, and drew me back into the maylay. She is a former swimmer, 5'4" tall, and over the course of 5 months shooting the show, her weight plummeted from 260 lbs to 105 lbs. This places her BMI at 18, in the underweight category.

Beyond all of the hype, all of the recriminations of Rachel and the show itself, what happened last night was that a young woman stood up on national television, in front of flashing lights and cheering crowds, and won $250,000 for getting skinny. She played the game masterfully. It's about who can lose the most weight, right?! 

This is what we value. We put it on TV, cheer for the contestants, and hold extreme weight loss up as the ideal. It draws enormous advertising dollars. We are fascinated by it. The whole premise of the show is to reward the person who loses the most, but when Rachel walked on stage last night, viewers labeled her weight loss as "shocking" and "sickening." 

It is not our place to jump through the screen and into her mind. She played the game, and she won. We shouldn't judge her for being skinny any more than we should have judged her for being fat before.

She's a former athlete and only 24 years old. It's a massive feat to do what she did but not nearly the uphill battle most of us in our 30s, 40s, and beyond - home and working full time - might face. Her weight loss is about her. It has nothing to do with us. 

She says she loves herself now and feels like she can do anything. I'm glad, and I hope that confidence continues to shine through. I hope it isn't contingent on her weight as it fluctuates over the years, and I hope that when she lands back in the silence of her kitchen - after we've all moved on to next year's biggest loser - that she feels at peace in her own skin. 

I wish her good health, whatever that might mean to her.