Cost of health..and a grand Slam Breakfast!

We talk about getting healthy and eating better and exercising. But do we really look at the financial benefits! I mean think about the major illness’s in the country and the many reasons why people are sick or dieing young. The major diseases or illness’s are obesity related items. Besides the fact that more than 50% of the children in the U.S. are considered obese and will be listed as Morbidly Obese before they graduate High School (if they live that long), this coming generation will be the first generation who will outlive their parents because of obesity related deaths! If that isn’t reason enough to make a change look at the fact that by getting healthy we can save about 10,000.00 a year per family in doctor visits, tests E.R. visits, CPAP Machines etc. That estimate is probably pretty low as well. I realized the other day that an estimated 18 Million people in the United States are diagnosed with Sleep Apnia. This number has dramatically increased along side with the increase of Obesity rates in this country. Think about that. You might as well start handing out CPAPS to kids when they graduate High School, it would save time!

Growing up I remember spending some summers with my grandparents. They were old school farmers and I remember my grandmother getting up every morning at 5 a.m. and making bacon, eggs, sausage biscuits and all that greasy unhealthy stuff for my grandfather. He then went out and worked the fields and worked hard. Probably burning off more then the calories he took in that morning. You see at some point because of the amazing ingenuity we have developed we have become stationary creatures! We find ways to make machines do or job or to simplify it so we actually do less work! The problem is when still consume the same if not more calories because now we have nothing to fill that extra time with but eating! It’s a vicious cycle and is painfully obvious to the point that we just ignore it! If I don’t look at it I can’t worry about it! My last post and the one before that was about running and that man was BORN to run. We were designed and created to be creatures of forward mobility..yet we fight it all the way! STOP FIGHTING IT. GET OFF YOUR BUTTS AND GET MOVIN!

Baby man was born to run!

So as i was hooked on the book Born To Run, i got a clear refocus on how i was running and with what!. You see the book, though i wont spoil it, is based around this Tribe in Mexico called the Taraumara Tribe. You see this tribe is amazing in the fact they are like ghost. They are hidden from society and have used running as enjoyment and transportation. they wear slim rubber sandles and thats it. They have hardly any injuries and run hundreds of miles at a time! The author learns some of their running philosopy's which I have infused into my running. They have 3 things you must master to be great at it. First thing is to focus on Easy! Make sure your runs are easy. not focused as much on speed and running super fast, that will come with everything else. the next part is smooth

Baby I Was Born To Run!

“BEEP BEEP BEEP” This is the unrelenting sound of the most basic alarm clock in the world, which is now yelling at me from my nightstand in the hotel. Today though It was the sound of destiny. I hadn’t slept a wink the night before, maybe a couple hours. I was too nervous. I had contemplated a couple times diving into the goodies bag I had gotten at the expo and trying the sleeping shake mix they added. “Nawww” I thought. It would probably make me sick or oversleep. I’m taking NO chances on this one. I got up and started to take a shower and play my plan over and over in head. I may not be a professional runner but that doesn’t mean I’m a moron. I plan for everything in this race. Rest Stops, my pacer group, the routes and the mental game. I started getting dressed and woke my wife up. “we need to get headed out soon if I want to get warm and find my pace group” I said. I turned on the tv to check the weather and ate my protein bar. The night before I did forget one thing. Breakfast! I always have a small bit of protein and toast before a run. I feel like it helps get me going. The hotel lobby of course had nothing but high priced liquor and candy bars! Then I found the one last Protein Bar. “Must be other runners in this hotel” I said. “45 degrees and rainy, fantastic” I said. This was not the weather I was hoping for my first Half-marathon. Luckily the night before we made a mad dash over to a large Sporting goods store for some long sleeve undershirt, headband and running gloves. I am happy now we did. We left the hotel room and headed down to the lobby. The sun apparently did NOT have a alarm clock I gathered because it was not even remotely peaking out yet. The lobby was filled with tons of runners. Young, old, good bad, they were all here. Some were sitting down eating breakfast. A small group was running laps around the inside commons area assumingly to get warmed up. I thought that might not be a bad idea so I started a light walk. This was such a strange experience. I mean just 6 months ago I was weighing in at 378lbs, Smoking and drinking and getting winded walking up one flight of stairs. Now I’m running a Half Marathon and among hundreds of runners. It felt like I was among my people. With kindred spirits testing themselves. If it wasn’t for this whole 3 Goods Philosophy, I most likely would never have made it here!

Basic Introduction

My name is Rusty Folsom. I am not yet a certified Personal trainer but I am working towards that. I am not a certified Nutritionist. I am your average Joe. I am the average American who is overweight. I was 31 yrs old, 378 lbs, heavy smoker and drinker. I had a history of diabetes’s and cancer. I am the worst case group. I was lucky enough to be touched by a personal trainer named Michelle Evan’s. What she offered me was a new life. The next year would begin a process of changing the old me. A person who was 300lbs at their Freshmen year of high school and knew nothing else then FAT. I was able to change this course of action. Through the process I developed an understanding of a basic principle. The 3 goods! Well get into what these are later. This is not a weight loss plan or a magic diet! Diets by their very nature will fail. This is and HAS to be a Lifestyle Change! Its not going to be easy. But lets be complete realistic, isn’t being lazy and taking the easy way out how we got here and why you now reading this book. Blood, sweat and year tears will allow you to earn back you body and your life. I am shining example to that. Well do it together you and I. I have faith in you and you have started to make the first step if you still reading. Lets Earn out life back!

Good Food: Phase III. Calories

So here we are Good Foods Phase III. We have talked about
Phase I. Water

Phase II. The Food
And here we go.
Phase III. The Calories

Now as I have said I am not a nutritionist. I am working on being certified as a Personal Trainer. This is going to be a difficult chapter because this will really fluctuate from person to person.
To be able to burn the right amount of calories and take those in we will to know some information. We will need to know what our RMR or Resting Metabolic Rate. RMR is the amount of energy expended while at rest. It can decreases with age and with the loss of lean body mass. Increased muscle mass and cardiovascular exercise can increase RMR. Illness, previously consumed food and beverages, environmental temperature, and stress levels can affect one's overall energy expenditure.
Let’s go back to the car and fuel analogy. When you cut calories BELOW your RMR, your body fights back. Restricting calories below your RMR is like asking your car's engine to run on too little gas. If your car is sitting in the driveway with the engine on, it is burning gas as it sits there. If you put the car in drive and step on the gas, it burns gas at a faster rate. What happens if you cut off the supply of gas to your engine? It sputters and eventually stalls. The same is true for your metabolism. We touched on this a little last time about cutting to much food, many people restrict their caloric intake too severely when trying to shed unwanted fat pounds. This causes an adverse affect, the metabolism slows down and the body goes into energy conservation mode, also known as starvation mode. . This is why we so often see individuals not losing fat weight while they are consuming a low calorie diet. The price of following this type of regimen is eventual weight gain in is often the case more weight than when you started the diet.
So why is this all important? So if we know what are resting rate is then we can figure out what our Caloric Burn is and then we can adjust our calories accordingly. So how do we find this out.
This little calculation should help:

RMR = 9.99(WEIGHT in Kilograms) +6.25(HEIGHT in centimeters) - 4.92(AGE in years) + 166(GENDER)-161

Weight in Kilograms-Take your WEIGHT in pounds and divide it by 2.2 to get your weight in kilograms.
Height In Centimeters- Measure your height in inches. Once you have your height in inches, multiply that number by 2.54.
Age in Years-Exactly what it says.
Gender- Add a number for your gender into the GENDER. If you are a FEMALE, you will enter a 0, if you are a MALE, you will enter a 1.

Then we do the calculations. We would multiply those in Parentheses against their numbers first. So in this equation RMR = 9.99(79.545) + 6.25(182.88) - 4.92(28) + 166(1)-161. We would first multiply 9.99 x 79.545. We would then go to the next number and do all those till we are ready at the end to do basic addition and subtraction.

You will then have a basic number for your RMR. Why is this important? Your RMR is generally 60-75% of your total daily caloric expenditure; rest of this should be burned through physical exertion. This number is now your baseline and whether you want to gain weight, maintain or lose weight; this is your base and you can modify it to help achieve those results!
Calorie wise we then have an idea on what we should be eating to lose weight. But how can we be sure were doing it all right. I would suggest for a while to keep a calories Diary. Everyday right down exactly what you ate. Every calorie. Anything that touches your mouth! Then you can get an idea of how things are going and were you might be struggling. Another good idea if you can afford it is some sort of Body Calorie Expenditure device. Bodybug© or Exespy© are two great systems that you wear on you and it gives you a daily number of expended calories. Then you know what you need to be taking in to drop the weight!

Another thing I definitely suggest is the getting a Metabolic Test done! This is a pretty accurate break down of your metabolism. The calculation I gave you earlier is close but its not going to be exact! A Metabolic Test can help you hit that target for sure! When It comes to food remember that we can EAT ourselves out of ANY workout we do! This is a great mindset to get ourselves into! When we go to eat and buy food look at that and say is this going to make the workout I do this week useless! FOOD IS FUEL!

Food For Thought-Bad Habits!

So Phase III takes a little longer to put together so I will put some thoughts up. This last week I realized that even though I thought I broke some bad habits they crept up and I saw them finally for what they were. Especially around the holidays its even worse. We were out shopping and kept seeing lots of fudge and candy and bad food choices on sale and I kept saying hey we should get that! That looks great! Where the hell did that come from lol. So I did some deep looking in myself and a look back. This isn’t just me that is the issue. Thought don’t doubt for one second that I haven’t taken accountability for all my actions! The Stores need to be held accountable for the options and selling that they do to us. Why don’t I see apples and bananas in the front isles greeting me, why candy. What they don’t think about is the fact that if we keep eating this way we will die early and then they won’t have anyone to buy there crap! But that doesn’t click in their brains. So its up to use to simply make the concision choices an say “NO”. Now that I have shed light on this issue I can work on replacing the bad habit with a better choice. Think about that this week when you going shopping with all the Christmas sales. Food for thought!

Good Food: Phase II. The Food

Keep in mind I’m not a Nutritionist, I am your average Joe. This stuff is so simple though and not complex that who needs a nutritionist to tell you these fundamentals!
In my last blog we started out with the beginning of the Good Food Phases

Phase I. Water

Next is the hard stuff. Good Food

Phase II. The Food

So were drinking all this good water and we probably have lost a little weight already but now the food stuff. The stuff we’re truly dreading! Really we shouldn’t though. This is all about eating healthy and eating right. The problem seems to be as a culture we take all this beautiful bountiful food and ruin it by deep frying it, covering it with ketchup etc. We really don’t need it and its adding tons of extra salt, sodium and calories. The idea is simple. Great food equal great fuel!

1. Fast Food- I can’t take credit for this quote but my trainer Michelle Evans got it stuck into my head and its great “If it has a drive thru….DRIVE BY!” Makes complete sense right. The only exception to this rule is Subway. The idea being that any restaurant with a drive-thru isn’t going to provide healthy food for you! Think of all the drive-thru’s you know. Which ones offer you that low call fat free meal not deep fried or off a greasy grill? Even those that offer salads are horrible. Though that’s a better solution than the cheeseburger their dressings are fat free usually and all the stuff on top are just as bad, tons of cheese etc. Just avoid it.

2. What’s In There- Another great habit I got into is that if I didn’t cook it, I didn’t eat it! This was great for me in the beginning. Early on in all this there is either going to be success or failure! Until all of it gets engrained into you its just easier to avoid the temptations for now. KNOW WHAT’S IN YOUR FOOD! Basic isn’t it. If you cook it you know exactly what you put in it. If you go to a restaurant or fast food then your guess is as good as mine!

3. Food As Fuel- We talked about the importance of fueling your body with the right gas. But why? Most people think, ok I’ll just cut back on my calories, maybe workout and boom I’ll lose weight and be fine! If it was that simple then we wouldn’t have tons of these magic pills, and magic diets! It is simple but we have to break some bad habits we have gotten into. Once we get into the exercise Sections you will begin to see that we are doing so much great exercise we need more fuel. The idea is that we are building muscle and losing fat. Muscle burns calories 21 times more efficiently then fat does and to make sure we have enough energy to build these muscles we need good food! Carbohydrates as much as they have been represented as the evil of weight over the years it just not sensible! How can you live a healthy LIFESTYLE on a low carb diet! You could never run a long race or do anything exerting a lot of energy for a good period of time. Now that said there are 2 types of Carbs, Complex Carbs and Simple Carbs. The names give them away. Complex Carbohydrates are basically those in wholegrain form such as wholegrain breads, oats, muesli, brown rice and most vegetables. Complex carbs are broken down into glucose more slowly than Simple Carbohydrate and thus provide a gradual steady stream of energy throughout the day. The problem with Most Complex Carbs is that they are so high in starch that its very hard to lose weight! Switching to things like Whole Wheat Pasta and getting most of your carbs from Vegetables (except Corn and Potatoes). Simple Carbohydrates which are found in fruits and dairy products are more easily digested by the body. They are also often found in processed, refined foods such as white sugar, pastas, and white bread. Because they break down more easily they don’t provide very effective energy sources for the body. Food For Fuel!

4. Great Foods- So we know now what we’re talking about carb wise but what about the other stuff. We will need to get more protein for muscle growth which will talk about next. We need to be sure we are eating less fatty foods. Also a lot of this is learning again what a good food is. Learning to read labels is a huge deal! Looks at what you are buying label wise. What are the calories per serving and the serving sizes as well at calories of fat etc. Soon I will be posting some great new recipes that I have lived by and they are not only easy to make but great tasting. We will talk in the next Phase about calories.

5. What’s This Thing Called Protein- Protein is going to be essential when building all this muscle. Increase protein does 2 great things for us. 1. There is tons of research to show that an intake of Protein before and after a workout helps in muscle grow and recovery of the stressed muscles happens much faster than without! And since were in the business of building muscle verse fat that’s awesome. 2. It also helps to curb our appetite. I truly didn’t believe this till I had cut my protein shakes out and was forced to start cutting back on my servings. I started back on my protein shakes and bam I noticed a dramatic loss of craving and hunger after I drank it!
Another great way of getting protein is Ground Turkey. Though I am against almost all processed meat this is one that gets the A+. Though the sodium levels can be kind of high you get some much protein out it verses ground beef (which is linked to colon cancer) you would be foolish to not eat it. It is extremely versatile.

So now we are drinking tons of water and have a great idea on what we should be eating! Think about your meals and how you prepare them. How can adjust this and make it better. Bake more of the foods you eat. Use a 0 calorie Spray Butter. There are tons of ways. Think about it and see how you are doing! Next blog I’ll talk about Calories! YAY!