Body By Dan

Category: Wellness
Published: November 2007

In my last article I used a bit of a Machiavellian strategy to scare you into exercising and eating right, and outlined a few brief points about how to live a healthy lifestyle. To recap, if you don't exercise and don't eat right, your risks for diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke and obesity increase dramatically. Exercising and eating right decreases the risk for all of those things and has many other benefits, such as increased bone density, increased self-confidence, and looking great no matter what you wear.

Starting to exercise is often the hardest part of becoming healthy. We are creatures of habit, and the thought of changing our daily structure seems very unappealing. It's hard to get off the couch and to the gym, but it would be a lot harder to tell your family that you have the beginning stages of a fatal illness. Obviously, having a sedentary lifestyle and poor diet does not guarantee that you will have a fatal illness later in life, but it highly increases the chances and also decreases life expectancy. I'd rather not run the risk. Plus, once you start working out and following a good diet, you'll quickly love the way it makes your body feel. A friend of mine recently lost 40 pounds and told me that he felt like a new man, and that he was sure he had superpowers now.

As you begin to work out, I recommend the following: walking long distances, swimming, doing light-weighted exercises, doing bodyweight exercises, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, eating a lot of protein, and eating no carbohydrates within 5 hours of when you go to sleep. As far as your diet goes, do not think that your entire caloric intake for the day should only come from two meals. You want to keep your metabolic rate as high as possible at all times. With that being said, eat something light every two hours. If you are trying to lose weight, your breakfast should be your biggest meal, and each successive snack at two-hour intervals should be a piece of fruit or lean meat and a glass of water. Try to drink water as most of your beverages, so you allow most of your dietary needs to come from whole foods. I recommend drinking about a gallon of water each day. Also, be sure to eat 1-2 servings of lean protein at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Starting out:
Many people start running when they first start out on their fitness quest, then they get shin splints and stop exercising due to injury, and return to their sedentary lifestyle. I don't recommend running as you just start off, especially for women. Their wider hips and narrow knees increases their risk for injury, not to mention each foot strike while running is the equivalent force of most plyometric impacts, and if you are running 1-2 miles, that's up to 3,500 plyometric impacts on any given run. If your body is not used to that type of intense impact training, you're just asking for injuries. Take it easy on your joints if you are just starting out.

Alright, I'm going to shut up now and tell you the basics of progressing through your first few months.

The Basics:
Each day, add 1-2 reps to each set of each exercise while using the same weight OR add 1 set to each exercise while using the same weight. After a few weeks, it will most likely begin to be difficult to add reps or sets that frequently, so just add a set or a few reps to each set once every week instead. Also, swim or walk as often as possible. A late night stroll may be just the thing you need to keep your metabolic rate high all day and night.

Sample Program:

Week 1:

• Monday:
  Pushups 2x8
  Bent-Over 1-arm Dumbbell
  Rows 2x8
  Lunges with bodyweight or
  dumbbells 2x10
  
• Wednesday: Pushups 2x9
  Bent-Over 1-arm Dumbbell
  Rows 2x9
  Lunges with bodyweight or
  dumbbells 2x12
  
• Saturday: Pushups 2x10 Bent-Over 1-arm Dumbbell
  Rows 2x10
  Lunges with bodyweight or dumbbells 2x14
  

• Monday: Pushups 3x9
  Bent-Over 1-arm Dumbbell
  Rows 3x9
  Lunges with bodyweight or
  dumbbells 3x10
  
• Wednesday: Pushups 3x9
  Bent-Over 1-arm Dumbbell
  Rows 3x9
  Lunges with bodyweight or
  dumbbells 3x12
  
• Saturday: Pushups 3x10
  Bent-Over 1-arm Dumbbell
  Rows 3x10
  Lunges with bodyweight or
  dumbbells 3x14